As I write this, the second race of the 2023 F1 season was almost a week ago. It was one of those races where you’re not that motivated to say much of anything because, well, there’s not much of anything to write about.
It was my first exposure to the Jeddah track and, well, apparently petro-bucks can’t buy good track. Pretty, sure. Good for racing? Not so much.
Aside from Verstappen teabagging the field in his overpowered Redbull, going from 15th to 2nd, not much else happened in the race. McLaren failed again, an Aston broke, and LeClerc took a 10 spot penalty because his Ferrari broke. I guess there was some backmarker jousting at some point but frankly who even cares. It’s like writing about the NFL and then mentioning that the Browns played someone. Sure, it happened. But does it matter to anyone but a few die-hard masochists? No, of course not.
In the two week intermission between races, the most notable thing that happened was the aforementioned Ferrari braking and setting Charles back 10 places. Besides that, Toto negged his own team a bunch and Tifosi already gave up on the season (they haven’t handled things any better after Jeddah). Lewis isn’t happy either but I guess that’s life when you go from years of dominance to getting walked.
More dramatic than any of this was the somewhat brief “who’s in third” shitshow caused by a penalty to Alonso. He got a weak 5 second penalty at the beginning for being outside of the starting box (he was off to the left which…doesn’t matter?). He served that penalty during what was probably an unnecessary safety car when Stroll’s Aston mysteriously shut down…but was basically entirely off the track when it stopped. While Alonso served this penalty, the rear jack *touched* the back of the car, which apparently violates the “cannot work on the car” rule somehow.
To make this all dumber, nobody told Alonso that this was a violation and he was looking at another penalty. So the man finished third, does the whole podium dog and pony show, and then after the ceremony is over the FIA goes “oh wait he gets a 10 second penalty and now Russell is 3rd.” The hell?
Aston Martin then spends a bunch of time reviewing footage, files an appeal, and wins. The reason? There were other instances of the jack touching the car thing and FIA hadn’t ruled it a violation. WELP. At least Alonso used the opportunity to make some fun memes about it. But man it was all stupid.
Hopefully Australia goes better.
By contrast, the 12 hours of Sebring was ran the day before and it was also a shitshow, but an entirely on-track one, with a bunch of random crashes and some overhang from a Daytona 24 Hours cheating scandal. Almost made you want to watch endurance racing, except nobody with a day job has time for 12 hours of cars going in circles.
