19
votes
Formula 1 Qatar Grand Prix 2023 - Results
It was an interesting race with tire strategy, given that Pirelli and the FIA imposed an 18-lap max on all tires, even used one, for safety reasons.
Results -- SPOILER
| POS | NO | DRIVER | CAR | LAPS | TIME/RETIRED | PTS |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | 1 | Max Verstappen | RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT | 57 | 1:27:39.168 | 26 |
| 2 | 81 | Oscar Piastri | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 57 | +4.833s | 18 |
| 3 | 4 | Lando Norris | MCLAREN MERCEDES | 57 | +5.969s | 15 |
| 4 | 63 | George Russell | MERCEDES | 57 | +34.119s | 12 |
| 5 | 16 | Charles Leclerc | FERRARI | 57 | +38.976s | 10 |
| 6 | 14 | Fernando Alonso | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 57 | +49.032s | 8 |
| 7 | 31 | Esteban Ocon | ALPINE RENAULT | 57 | +62.390s | 6 |
| 8 | 77 | Valtteri Bottas | ALFA ROMEO FERRARI | 57 | +66.563s | 4 |
| 9 | 24 | Zhou Guanyu | ALFA ROMEO FERRARI | 57 | +76.127s | 2 |
| 10 | 11 | Sergio Perez | RED BULL RACING HONDA RBPT | 57 | +80.181s | 1 |
| 11 | 18 | Lance Stroll | ASTON MARTIN ARAMCO MERCEDES | 57 | +81.652s | 0 |
| 12 | 10 | Pierre Gasly | ALPINE RENAULT | 57 | +82.300s | 0 |
| 13 | 23 | Alexander Albon | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 57 | +91.014s | 0 |
| 14 | 20 | Kevin Magnussen | HAAS FERRARI | 56 | +1 lap | 0 |
| 15 | 22 | Yuki Tsunoda | ALPHATAURI HONDA RBPT | 56 | +1 lap | 0 |
| 16 | 27 | Nico Hulkenberg | HAAS FERRARI | 56 | +1 lap | 0 |
| 17 | 40 | Liam Lawson | ALPHATAURI HONDA RBPT | 56 | +1 lap | 0 |
| NC | 2 | Logan Sargeant | WILLIAMS MERCEDES | 40 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 44 | Lewis Hamilton | MERCEDES | 0 | DNF | 0 |
| NC | 55 | Carlos Sainz | FERRARI | 0 | DNS | 0 |
Fastest Lap: Max Verstappen
Source: F1.com
F1 heads to the US in two weeks for COTA (Oct 20-22). Hopefully the drivers and teams get a bit of a break from such a grueling race. See you all there!
Yeah, um…they really shouldn’t race here imo. Logan couldn’t finish, multiple drivers had to be helped out of their cars, Ocon threw up in his helmet, lots of uncharacteristic sloppy driving. The heat combined with the winding dizzying track layout just feels like a needlessly brutal combo.
Red Bull should be worried for next year. McLaren has two drivers with immense talent, seemingly pretty open to play the team game, and is becoming the second best team more and more consistently. Max can probably still cruise to the drivers’ win, but he can only score so many points in a weekend. They’ve dragged their feet with Perez for too long, and they don’t have a great option for the second seat at the moment. The constructors’ title next year could be up for grabs.
Welp, good thing we're here for 9 more years! Yeah, I'm not a fan of this track either. It's super flat and then there are all the track limits issues. I guess Lusail is really a MotoGP track.
It was mentioned on F1TV that Sargeant was actually sick this weekend, but the team kept it on the DL for whatever reason. So he had it the worst with the heat and humidity. But yeah, I feel bad for all the drivers.
Sky had James Vowles on the line during the race and Croft asked him directly whether Sargent's nausea was something he had already been suffering or was it new, and Vowles said that Sargent had been feeling fine until then. Was Vowles covering for Sargent, or is someone on F1TV making something up? His race engineer did seem to jump very, very quickly to "retire the car if you feel you need to", but I put that down to us hearing just a fraction of the full volume of team radio.
Source: WilliamsF1.com
The team acknowledged he was sick afterwards. But maybe they were trying to hide it, especially since at first Logan seemed to want to do push through.
Very interesting, thanks for that. Poor guy must have felt absolutely awful in that heat and under that stress. I saw videos on youtube of Stroll and Albon getting out of the car and they both looked in very poor shape.
Pardon the melodramatic Spanish title, this is the video I saw of Stroll - he's clearly very lightheaded.
Next year, the Qatar race is going to be right before the Abu Dhabi race on December 1. By then, temperatures will be much lower than they were today and they should race in similar conditions to Abu Dhabi, where the drivers race every year, usually without issue.
Nice, that makes much more sense. Kinda like how the 2022 World Cup was in Nov/Dec.
I'd prefer if they didn't race in Qatar -- I think the track is boring -- but at least drivers won't be dying from dehydration out there.
it'll be nicer. It was fun to have lap limits for the tires for one race.. but it isn't worth Ocon throwing up in his helmet before the first pit.
It was quite concerning was seeing drivers struggle to get out of the car. Grosjean had to struggle to make it out of that inferno, and that was essentially him at the peak of his fitness. Something like that happening today, some of those drivers didn't look like they could make it out.
Fully agree, Stroll looked about to faint once he was out of the car. He was very clearly getting light-headed. I think that the adrenaline would get them up and out in the event of a fire, but it's not something the FIA should be relying on to meet safety standards.
Fantastic recovery drive from Russell. Shame about the incident in general, wish they could have choreographed it more, and what a weird decision for the early softs on Hamilton.
Perez, what a shocking drive. Was pitiful to watch. The comparison to what Russell achieved is extremely concerning.
Zhou had a pretty underrated drive. Nice to see two Saubers up there.
Zhou and Perez made up 10 spots each, which is great. Sadly, Perez will not survive the winter.
Its a shame we didn't get to see Lewis take up first for a few laps. I'm still a relatively new fan, but I've been watching older seasons and its just nice to see him winning.
Ultimately, I think next year is going to be a really competitive year outside of Max.
I got my ass handed to me in a pool I run. I'm still waiting for DHL to confirm, but it looks like McLaren pulled a 1.8s pitstop!
I think it came up in the podium interviews. Norris gave his team a shoutout, which was great to see. There's so many hours of human labour that get poured into ~2 hours of racetime and many of those hours require peak performance and attention to detail.
I think the issues drivers were having were not necessarily caused (the heat definitely was the main factor) but definitely not helped by the fact the race was a forced 3 stop so they essentially were doing 57 quali laps rather than being allowed to cool down or relax a bit more.
Hopefully next year's race being 6 weeks later does a lot to make it safer for the drivers.
The lack of cruising and tyre/fuel saving was incredibly noticeable. Races normally oscillate pretty sharply between frenetic/boring, and while this Qatar race was a bit more entertaining, it looked like it was drastically harder on the drivers.