Throughout the 2023 Formula 1 season, Max Verstappen and Red Bull asserted their dominance over the grid, leaving competitors like Lewis Hamilton and the Mercedes team struggling to make an impact.
Mercedes Chief Toto Wolff acknowledged Verstappen as the sole driver who fully maximized his car’s potential during the year. Verstappen’s performance was nothing short of impressive, securing victory in 19 out of 22 races and finishing lower than second only once – an unusual occurrence during an off-weekend for Red Bull at the Singapore Grand Prix, where he still managed to secure points with a fifth-place finish.
In contrast, Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez fell considerably short of his level, accumulating fewer than half the points throughout the season. Other teams, such as Mercedes and Ferrari, grappled with performance inconsistencies and struggled to match the sheer dominance of Verstappen’s Red Bull.
Wolff observed fluctuations in the performances of his own drivers as well. Lewis Hamilton demonstrated strength in the initial half of the season but experienced a challenging conclusion, while George Russell, in his first year as a Mercedes driver, failed to find the consistency that marked his earlier performances. The 2023 season thus witnessed Verstappen’s unparalleled excellence, leaving competitors in awe of his commanding presence on the track.
Only Verstappen, the Austrian admits, produced his best form. “It’s difficult to comprehend that good drivers in various teams have these oscillations of performance,” he said. “You’ve seen it this [in Abu Dhabi] with [Carlos] Sainz and [Charles] Leclerc, you’ve seen it with George and Lewis, Oscar [Piastri] and Lando [Norris].
“And the obvious one is Perez and Verstappen. Perez is not a second slower than Max. So, what is that? We have seen it swinging in both directions. So fundamentally, I think it’s all around the tyre grip. If you are able to have the car in a sweet spot, a stable platform that you start the work with the beginning of the weekend, then you can extract performance.
“I think if you’re not, there’s just no performance. You’re falling off the cliff, literally. So I have no explanation for that. I think the only one this year who has understood how to drive these tyres is Max.”
Ferrari’s team principal, Frederic Vasseur, concurred with this evaluation. Throughout the year, Vasseur witnessed his drivers, Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc, engaging in a series of position swaps in the championship standings. However, a challenging conclusion to Sainz’s season created an opportunity for Leclerc to surpass him, finishing six points ahead of the Spanish driver in the final standings.
“I think it’s true that the Carlos was very, vey strong after the summer break and Charles was flying in the last six or seven events,” said Vasseur. “But, overall, I think the evaluation that we had into the team was a good one.
“It was true for every single team except Max – everybody on the grid had up-and-down during the season. It’s very, very tight so sometimes for one tenth [of a second] or one tenth and a half, because you like the track or you like the set-up of the car on the day, you can move from P2-P3 to P10 and then it’s almost a disaster.”
