What’s the biggest question facing each F1 team?

From Ferrari’s struggles to Red Bull’s dominance, looking at the one big question facing each F1 team

Formula 1 has hit the pause button.

With the cancellation of the Chinese Grand Prix, there is now a big gap between the Australian Grand Prix and the next race, the Azerbaijan Grand Prix at the end of the month. That gives teams, drivers, fans, and yes media a chance to catch their breath, take stock of where things stand, and see if fortunes can improve by Baku.

What might the teams look to address over this extended break?

We will try and answer that, and more, with a look at the one burning question facing each team. We’ll start at the bottom of the table and work our way toward the top.

Williams: 1 point
Can they find any racing consistency?

Williams actually got off to a decent start this season. Both rookie Logan Sargeant and veteran Alex Albon showed promise during pre-season testing in Bahrain, and then Albon finished in the points in the season-opening Grand Prix, coming in tenth.

Since then, however, it has been a much different story. Albon has endured back-to-back DNFs, first in Saudi Arabia when his FW45 suffered a brake issue which forced his retirement.

Then in Melbourne, Albon was once against strong in qualifying, especially in the first qualifying session when he was as high as P2. He made it through to the third qualifying session, eventually qualifying eighth. It was his highest qualifying result since joining Williams.

However, his Australian Grand Prix would end early, as he spun through the gravel on Lap 7 and retired. Since the Grand Prix, the team has pointed to a spike in rear tyre temperature, caused by Albon going through Turn Five a little faster and riding the kerb a little bit more, as the reason for the crash.

Still, the back-to-back early exits have the team sitting on that lone point from Bahrain. With Sargeant still getting his footing in F1, Albon finding racing consistency will be a massive boost to the team.

AlphaTauri: 1 point
Was Australia a breakthrough of sorts for Yuki Tsunoda?

Photo by Peter Fox/Getty Images

After a pair of 11th-place finishes to start the season, including a hard-fought battle with Kevin Magnussen of Haas in the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, Yuki Tsunoda broke through with the first points of the season for AlphaTauri, finishing in tenth place in the Australian Grand Prix.

Was that finish a sign of things to come for Tsunoda, or a mere function of the chaotic finish to the Grand Prix?

While it might be the latter, given the retirement of George Russell and the five-second penalty imposed on Carlos Sainz Jr., it is worth noting that since the Australian Grand Prix, AlphaTauri Team Principal Franz Yost spoke very highly of Tsunoda, making the case for him to move up to Red Bull for the 2025 season:

If the result in Australia is indeed the start of a breakthrough for Tsunoda, it could very well put him on track for such a move a few seasons from now.

Alfa Romeo: 6 points
Can they find any race pace?

Thanks to Valtteri Bottas’s eighth-place finish in Bahrain, and Zhou Guanyu’s ninth-place finish in Australia, Alfa Romeo currently sits eighth in the Constructors’ standings with six points on the year.

However, there is certainly room for improvement, and Bottas is hoping the team uses this extended break to find what they are missing right now.

Racing pace.

Speaking after the Australian Grand Prix, Bottas had this to say about where the team is, and what is missing. “It has [been a difficult weekend]. Definitely off the pace from where we thought we should be,” Bottas said after Melbourne. “So, something to look into. I’m actually glad that there is a bit of time before the next race so we can figure out something.”

Bottas also shared this on social media:

If the team indeed finds some racing pace over the break, and into the next stretch of the season, they could push higher up the mid-table.

If not, however, it could be a long season for Alfa Romeo.

Haas: 7 points
Can they pull off double points in a race?

In the latest season of the Netflix docuseries Drive to Survive, Red Bull Team Principal Christian Horner made the case that for a team to be successful in F1, it needs both drivers contributing.

That is true not just for the teams at the top of the table, but also for the teams in the middle of the pack.

Perhaps the biggest thing missing right now at Haas is consistency from both drivers. Both Magnussen and Nico Hülkenberg finished out of the points in Bahrain, and then Magnussen fought his way into P10 in Saudi Arabia.

That script flipped in Melbourne, with Hülkenberg picking up his first points of the season, while Magnussen’s late-race scrape with the wall set the stage for the late red flag, and the frenetic finish to the Grand Prix.

If Haas could get both of their drivers to put together a strong week, and start posting some double-points races, we might see a little magic from Guenther Steiner’s team this season.

Alpine: 8 points
Was the collision between Gasly and Ocon a harbinger of doom?

Photo by Qian Jun/MB Media/Getty Images

When the news came out at the end of last season that Pierre Gasly would be joining Alpine for the 2023 season, many wondered about how he would coexist with his new teammate, Esteban Ocon.

After all, the two grew up near each other and have been racing against each other for years, dating back to their karting days. But the friendship they forged in those early days was tested as the two pushed for spots in F1.

In a 2018 episode of the Beyond the Grid podcast Gasly lamented how the two had grown apart. “Just to see the way we grew up and where we are now, it’s just fantastic. So I think we really respect each other as a driver, but unfortunately there is not the feeling that we had in the past, which was much more friendly,” said Gasly at the time.

Their pairing offered a chance to turn their relationship around. “It’s an opportunity for both of us to get back to a similar relationship that we had in the past,” Gasly said in an interview with F1.com after the move was announced. “What was the probability that two six-year-old kids from Normandy, France, living 20 minutes from each other, would end up 20 years later as team-mates in a French team? I think that is incredible and a very special story.”

Ocon shared that sentiment. “Now we are team-mates in a team from Normandy and we are both from Normandy, so I think we can write a great story together.”

Still, the late-lap collision between the two has brought those pre-season concerns to the surface. Was that truly a one-off incident, or a sign of things to come? After Melbourne, both drivers, as well as Team Principal Otmar Szafnauer, classified the collision as a pure racing incident. “It was truly a racing incident,” Szafnauer stated. “Who’s to blame for something like that? Hindsight you look back at it and say great, shouldn’t have crashed but there are times you can’t avoid it, things happen in front of you where you have a decision of ‘I either run into this or run into that’ because you can’t avoid it.”

“It’s a shame that they came together,” Szafnaur continued. “As far as trying to blame one or the other, I don’t think that’s the right thing to do; the right thing to do is to learn from it. There’s so much chaos there and you’ve got to make quick decisions.”

If the difficult end to the Australian Grand Prix was indeed a one-off for the Alpine duo, the team can manage to push their way further up the table.

if not, however ...

McLaren: 12 points
Was Australia real, or a mirage?

It is amazing how much can change over 58 laps.

Heading into the Australian Grand Prix the mood was dark around McLaren. They were sitting at the bottom of the Constructors’ standings, yet to secure a single point over the first two races of the season. That brutal start led to questions over panic around the team and some changes in leadership.

But then, the dark clouds parted, if only for an afternoon. McLaren notched double points in Melbourne, with Lando Norris finishing sixth and hometown hero Oscar Piastri coming across the line in P8, the first points finish of his F1 career.

Was their success in Melbourne simply a product of the chaotic finish, or a sign of better days to come?

Team Principal Andrea Stella said at the start of the season that Baku was his target for when things would turn around for McLaren. Team Papaya is hoping that the process actually started a little earlier than expected.

Ferrari: 26 points
Is this a lost season?

Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images

By almost any measure it has been a brutal start to the 2023 season for the Scuderia.

But can they manage to turn things around?

Ferrari has faced reliability issues throughout the first weeks of the season, culminating in Charles Leclerc taking a ten-place grid penalty for the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix when the team installed the third control electronics unit on his SF-23. They saw both drivers struggle with race pace in Jeddah, and then both Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr. finished out of the points in Melbourne. Leclerc was perhaps a bit too aggressive on the opening lap of the race and ended up in the gravel, and then Sainz was given a five-second penalty for his collision with Fernando Alonso on the late restart, dropping him out of the points.

Ferrari has since appealed the penalty to FIA, but for now, they sit fourth in the Constructors’ standings.

Making matters worse, the reliability questions are not going away after the MGU-K on Nico Hülkenberg’s Haas failed near the end of the Australian Grand Prix.

Can new Team Principal Frédéric Vasseur turn things around this season, or is 2023 going to be a lost season for Ferrari?

Mercedes: 56 points
Have they truly righted the ship?

Speaking of turning things around ...

Mercedes Team Principal Toto Wolff called the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix one of the team’s “worst” days in racing. Since then, however, the Silver Arrows seem to have righted the ship. Both George Russell and Lewis Hamilton finished in the top five in Saudi Arabia, and the pair qualified in P2 and P3, respectively, for the Australian Grand Prix.

Unfortunately for Russell, a strategic decision to pit under an early safety car backfired when the red flag came out, meaning Russell had sacrificed the race lead for naught. Things went from bad to worse for Russell when his W14 suffered an engine failure, knocking him out of the race entirely.

However, while Hamilton could not hold off Max Verstappen for the win, he was able to hold off Fernando Alonso to finish in P2, his first podium of the 2023 campaign.

With Ferrari floundering at the moment, Mercedes seems to have found their footing. And with improvements to the W14 expected by Baku, the Silver Arrows could find themselves continuing this upward trend into the summer.

Aston Martin: 65 points
Can they push for a title?

Following his third-straight podium to start the season — the first time since 2013 that he had secured three-straight podium finishes — veteran driver Fernando Alonso said pushing for second place was the next step for 2023.

But can Aston Martin push even higher?

The gap to Red Bull seems substantial right now, but Aston Martin has perhaps been the story of the F1 season, at least to this point. They were the darlings of pre-season testing, and now teams like Mercedes and Ferrari are looking to catch up to Aston Martin, and not Red Bull.

Can Aston Martin push their way to the top? It might take some slippage from the Bulls, but with this extended break — and the way Alonso, Lance Stroll, and the AMR23 are performing so far — it could happen.

Red Bull: 123 points
Do they have anything to worry about?

Photo by Mark Thompson/Getty Images

I mean, that is the biggest question facing them, right?

The RB19 is the class of the field, as every other team admits each week. Despite Max Verstappen’s qualifying issues in Saudi Arabia, he still charged up the field to finish in P2, just behind teammate Sergio Pérez. And when Pérez slid off the track in Q1 in Melbourne and ended up starting from pit road, he too worked his way through the field, eventually finishing fifth.

And yes, there is the potential for tension between the two drivers, especially if they remain one-two in the Drivers’ standings. However, Horner brushed those concerns aside recently. If he indeed can keep the peace between Verstappen and Pérez, it should be smooth sailing for Red Bull.

Unless the rest of the field puts this extended break to good use.

Until then, however, perhaps we can interest you in the new Red Bull/Blenders eyewear collection. Father’s Day and graduation season are just around the corner. If you’ve got a Red Bull fan in your life...