How Are the Bottom Five Constructors Doing So Far? || F1 2023

00:00

We’re three races into the season, with DNFs, cars not behaving like expected and points being thrown away. And it’s time to have a look at how the bottom five teams are doing. So, get ready because you’ve been summoned to the steward’s office.

00:21

Hello everyone and welcome back to the Steward’s Office. I’m Saira and today I’m going to be having a chat about the bottom five teams in the constructors’ championship right now. We’re three races into the season and I thought we could just sit back and have a chat about how the teams are doing, what the TPs and drivers are saying and what the rest of the season might look like for them. I’m splitting this into two parts so it’s the bottom five teams this week and make sure you come back next week for when we look at the top five teams.

00:53

So, let’s start with the team that is currently in last place and that is Williams with a grand total of one point that they’ve started the season with. And in all honestly, I don’t think that’s a good representation of where the car is and where the team is right now.

01:09

oint in a season opener since: 2017

01:44

Saudi was an unlucky one for the team with Alex DNFing about halfway into the race with brake issues and Logan finishing in P16. And Australia just got worse for them with both cars not only coming away with no points from that weekend but also DNFing.

02:03

Look, to me, the looks a lot better compared to last year and Alex seems to be so much more comfortable in the team now. Australia was definitely unlucky for him because I think he could have brought home some really good points for the team. He was running in P8 before his DNF. So, it would have been a nice haul of points for Willaims.

02:23

And to be honest, with Logan, he’s done a lot better than what I’d expected. Those last couple of laps in Australia brought about the first incident for him with Nyck de Vries but in general, I think he’s been a pretty consistent driver.

02:37

We’re seeing something in that Williams this year that makes it look like it has the potential to consistently fight for points. Not just a car that might be able to for a couple of races and then struggles at most of the tracks

02:51

I think with James Vowles now becoming Team Principal, there’s a lot more that we have the potential to see in Williams. It’s not going to be an overnight change but there are things that he wants to bring into the team that will take a bit of time and I really hope that means that we're gonna start seeing an upward trajectory from all of them.

03:10

James has already said that he feels like the team has a spark in it and I think those first points and the potential of the car is definitely going to help with that. They’ve got a pretty decent car to build on as the season goes on now and as Logan carries on building his confidence in the car and on track then there’s the potential to have two cars in the points on a race weekend.

03:32

In 9th we then have AlpahTauri who also have one sole point to their name. This was a team that was definitely hoping for a much better start, especially when you look at what happened to them last season. But that just isn’t materialising for them.

03:49

I feel like they were probably hoping for a bit more from Nyck and compared to the absolute rockstar start he had when he stepped into the Williams at Monza last year, he’s not exactly been grabbing headlines. A little bit more under the radar and falling behind Yuki a bit as well.

04:06

Bahrain had the drivers finish in 11th and 14th with Nyck one lap down and Franz Tost was not happy with the car. It wasn’t where he thought it was going to be after the work the team had done in the winter break. And Saudi gave the team the exact same results, back in P11 and P14. And the team weren’t disappointed with the drivers, they were happy with the race pace both of them had managed to draw out. But once again, just another track where the team weren't happy with car performance.

04:37

Jody Egginton who’s the team’s Techincal Director was saying that they were trusting that the aero upgrades that they were going to be bringing in coming races would make a difference but I’m not sure how much trust the team can actually put in that right now. I mean, from the sounds of it, the car isn’t really correlating to their wind tunnel data so who really know how these upgrades are going to act when they hit the track.

05:00

Australia did prove to have a little bit of light relief for the team after Yuki managed to get to P10. And don’t get me wrong, I’m so glad that he finally managed to score his first points of the season but I somehow think that the 8 DNFs might have helped him out just a little bit there. One of those DNFs did happen to be his teammate, Nyck, so I don’t think the other side of the AlphaTauri garage were too happy, especially when it was during the last two laps of the race.

05:32

To be fair, Yuki was really honest after that race. Of course, he was happy that the team managed to get some points on the board but he didn’t think the car had the pace to actually deserve P10. Jody mentioned the fact that there was going to be a lot of data to get through before Baku, they didn’t have straight-line speed, their car wasn’t really working on all the tyre compounds. There just seems to be a long list of things that are wrong with that AlphaTauri right now and it’s probably a good thing that they have more wind tunnel time than most of the grid because they’re gonna need it.

06:05

There was a new floor that AlphaTauri used in Australia… well both cars were meant to run the new floor during the race but Yuki damaged his during practice and had to swap to the old floor for the race but he still managed to qualify ahead of Nyck. So, I can’t tell whether that new floor was really working for them but hopefully, during Baku, we might see what Yuki can actually do with it and if it’s helping them at all.

06:28

Yuki already doesn’t have the best outlook for Baku, he feels like the awful straight-line speed of the car is really gonna hinder them. He mentioned that he felt there was a lot of drag on the straights in Melbourne so it’s something they’re gonna have to try and address before heading out to Azerbaijan.

06:46

Franz has already joked that he doesn’t trust his engineers but you can tell right now there’s a lot of discontent coming from their Team Principal. There’s pressure from the Red Bull group to have the team perform better compared to last year as well so I think the next couple of races and where their development really goes from this point is going to be so important for them. Because being on the cusp of points isn’t going to be enough. If Williams’ luck starts to change in terms of their DNF and AlphaTauri can’t find a way to improve the car, then there’s a very good chance that AlphaTauri are gonna be seeing themselves at the bottom of the table for a good part of the season.

07:23

Coming in 8th in Alfa Romeo with 6 points. And they’ve confused me a little bit. I don’t really know where the team are, what the car is doing, what to expect of them. And it seems like this is the case with some members of the team as well.

07:39

Four of their six points came in Bahrain from Valtteri Bottas claiming P8 and the signs looked promising for me at that point. They were within the top five teams for the race, the points had got them to P5 in the Constructors’ and Guanyu even managed to get the fastest lap in. And Alessandro Alunni Bravi, the team rep, was pretty happy there as well. Said that of course, they were going to look at improving the car but, overall, the team were happy with the outcome and were glad that the work that they’d done over the winter break was paying off.

08:09

Saudi though left both of their drivers out of the points. Starting at 11th and 14th, there was definitely a chance for them to try and get there but it just didn’t materialise for them. And Alessandro wasn’t as happy as Bahrain but thought the team would be able to bring upgrades to Australia which would help their performance. But Australia wasn’t exactly the best race for them either. Guanyu managed to get P9 and take some points home for the team, with Valtteri finishing in P11 but like AlphaTauri, there were 8 DNFs at play here to help them get those points.

08:43

And don’t get me wrong here, there’s obviously something to be said about reliability, having a clean race and being able to dodge a tangle of cars ahead of you but the team are saying that they’re still trying to find the pace that they had back in Bahrain. And Valtteri is saying the same thing, he wants to try and figure out what’s happened and why the cars have seemed to lose pace since that first race.

09:05

The thing is, Bahrain is an outlier of a track, a lot of the drivers say it and the teams also have three testing days where you can really nail the setup before you even start the race weekend. So, maybe that was something that helped them with their race pace, maybe it was just more track specific for the car. But they haven’t been that consistent at the start of the season.

09:28

Hopefully, they can figure out what’s going on with the car over this break before Baku. I don’t think they’re necessarily gonna benefit from just throwing upgrades at the car right now because there seems to be almost a gap in their knowledge of the car and what can make it work well. So, I have a feeling there is gonna be a lot of trawling through data over the next couple of weeks as they try and figure out how to mimic their pace in Bahrain or at least get to the root of the problem and why they can't seem to mimic that pace.

09:57

Valtteri said himself, that the upgrade they had bought to Australia was working like it was meant to and it did feel like an improvement but he’s just a bit confused why the car doesn’t seem to be performing which isn’t the greatest place for a driver to be in.

10:11

I don’t really know what’s gonna happen with them this season. I feel like we saw a bit more promise from them last year. They had seemed to be fighting more with the midfield last year and I hope they get back to that sort of form because it is a very long season and anything could happen but I think there are a few things that they really need to get on top of right now. It’s just a bit disappointing from the team because they have a pretty solid lineup and with a decent car, I think both of the drivers would be able to score some pretty consistent points but that’s just not the case right now.

10:44

Haas have then managed to pip Alfa Romeo to the post with 7 points. And overall, I don’t think this has been a bad start to the season for them. The car seems to just perform better in quali than it does during the race and Nico Hulkenberg has played a pretty big part in their good quali form so far this season.

11:03

First race back and he managed to qualify in P10 with Kevin back in P17. Kevin ended up P13 in the race so there was definitely good pace for him to make up places but Nico had a more compromised race because of some contact that he had at the start which meant that he ended the race in 15th.

11:21

Out in Saudi, Kevin got the team to pick up their first point of the season and Nico wasn’t too far behind in P12 so it was a fairly strong outing for them. And Guenther Steiner seems to have a bit more confidence in where the Haas car was after that race. He’d wasn’t really sure where to place the car after Bahrain which is fair because like I said, it is an outlier of a track, you have a lot more time to prepare for that track compared to all of the other races and it's not representative for the entire season but Saudi gave the team a lot more information.

11:54

Australia did see a DNF from Kevin after he had a brush with the wall with his rear tyre coming off. NNico on the other hand definitely was able to benefit from the mass amount of DNFs in Australia since he managed to finish in P7 and get a few more points for the team.

12:10

Haas seems to be pretty positive on the outlook for the season and think that they should be in the mix for the midfield fight and I could see that happening. If they can keep up with the development race then I don’t see why they can't compete with the rest of the midfield. But we did see signs of this last year, where they looked like they were going to be competing and then towards the end of the season, things just seemed to drop off a little more and that might have been because of the lack of money to help them bring upgrades. I think last year they only really had one big upgrade package and then that was it. There was nothing else.

12:48

Hopefully, we won’t see that much of an issue with that side of things because of their huge title sponsorship with MoneyGram now. So, I’m cautious about being optimistic with Haas but as long as they can keep up with the developments, then I think the car has a chance at battling with some of the other midfield cars and improving their standing from last year. But like I said, I'm very cautious and I'm not getting ahead of myself with Haas here.

13:11

And finally, making up the bottom five and coming in at P6 is Alpine with 8 points to their name. Two of those came from Bahrain with Pierre claiming P9. But what an absolute nightmare of a start to the season for Esteban that probably cost the team a few points.

13:31

A stack of time penalties meant that there was just no chance of him fighting to get into that top 10 and the team ended up deciding to retire him from the race. And I get that, it’s a long season and why keep running the engine when you aren’t going to get anything from it? I get that there is obviously data that you can collect on the car but it’s a toss-up between data or being able to run that engine just a little longer. And I for one would probably take the latter. Especially since they had Pierre’s car still running and they could take the data from that.

14:03

There’s definitely work that the pit crew need to do after that GP though since one of Esteban’s penalties came from them touching the car too soon. It’s small things like that that can have a massive effect on team results so operationally, they had some work to do after Bahrain.

14:19

Saudi was a much better outing for the team, both drivers got to Q3, and both of them managed to finish in the points during the race at P8 and P9. So, maybe not as high up as they might want to be but at least they didn’t have the same issues that they did in Bahrain which I would say is a positive. The team aren’t really pleased with the performance though. Otmar Szafnauer said that there were obviously positives that they could take from Saudi but the car wasn’t where they wanted it to be. He knows it’s going to take a lot of hard work for everyone on the team to take a fight to the front of the grid and who knows how long that might take or if they’re gonna be able to do it this season.

14:59

Australia was a bit of an interesting one for the team. Let’s start off with the fact that yeah, both drivers did end up DNFing after Pierre caused an incident with Esteban during one of the restarts. So no points from the race which is disappointing, especially because the car looked like it was in much better form this race. As disappointed as Otmar seems to be with the result, he knows what the car was capable of on that day.

15:27

Pierre was running in P5 and for a lot of the race he was around Aston Martin and Ferrari which is definitely a boost for the team compared to the last couple of races that we saw but it’s also kinda hard to read too much into that. We saw the same sort of thing with Mercedes in Australia, where the car seemed to be performing way better than what anyone had expected, even the team, but there’s a good chance that in both cases, it could be track-specific. Australia was also a track that wasn't causing as much tyre degradation for the team and that could have played into it as well. So, we’re gonna have to wait and see if that sort of form can be carried on for the next couple of races which would be great to see but I’m not so sure about right now.

16:14

Those first two races for Alpine were just disappointing for me though because after their performance from last year, I thought they would be able to build on that a bit more and slowly get their way closer to the front. But it almost feels like they took a few steps backwards and instead of fighting for best of the rest like they did with McLaren last year, they seem to be right in the middle of the midfield battle.

16:40

The team have an upgrade coming to Baku so that might help them pull up the order a little bit more. They are trying to be more aggressive with their upgrades this year and bring some kind of upgrade most of the races throughout the season. So, little upgrades that they're hoping are gonna bring performance and help with their development race to the majority of the races but I think they've pretty much ruled out bringing an upgrade to every single race.

17:06

The development race is gonna be key to every single teams standing and it's about getting those upgrades right. Not just chucking something on the car and not having it make a difference or even make the car worse. So, Alpine is gonna be a team to keep an eye on throughout the season to see if their aggressive development plan makes a difference and if they are able to keep up or even pull ahead of those of the teams around them to get towards the top of the grid.

17:34

I can’t lie, I think Australia massively messed up the constructors’ standings because McLaren should be here. Before Australia, they were in last place and they’ve managed to leapfrog themselves up to P5. And I will talk about them a lot more in next week’s episode but without those DNFs, I don’t think they would be that high up. So, I don’t think that some of the teams are really where they should be because of that and also because of some bad luck and the mess that was Australia in general.

18:06

Overall though, the team that’s definitely surprised me the most has to be Williams. I know they’re in P10 but the car looks so much better compared to what we’ve seen from them and I’m putting it out there, I’ve got a lot of hope for them this season. I don’t think they’ll be finishing in P10 this year. I’m saying P8 maybe P7 but I don't think they're coming in dead last in all honesty.

18:33

But between the car looking a lot better, Alex just becoming more and more comfortable with the team and the car and James Vowles taking over, there’s so much potential in that team. It’s just gonna be a question as to whether they can really exploit that potential or not because what they don’t need are reruns of what happened in Australia.

18:54

On the other side though, I am disappointed with AlphaTauri but not too surprised. It’s gutting for Yuki because in his third year of F1, he seems like a much better driver and I’ve always thought that he has a lot of talent, it’s just refining it and I think we’re seeing that now but the car just isn’t allowing him to do much or to showcase it a lot.. They just seem in a bit of a pit right now and they’re going to need Nyck to start fighting up towards the points with Yuki for them not to end up at the bottom of the table. But more than their drivers they really need to hope that whatever upgrades the bring to next couple of races are gonna work and give them that pace that they're looking for.

19:40

And then there’s Alpine… they’re probably the team I’m most disappointed in right now because I expected so much more from them. I don’t know how they managed to regress but I really hope they can figure it out soon. To see them in the mix with Ferrari and Mercedes and Aston Martin would be great, we would get some really amazing racing up at the front between all of the drivers in those four teams. But as aggressive as they want their development to be, they are gonna have to contend with the cost cap so they’ll have to be smart about their upgrades and it might take a little while for them to make up their pace deficit.

20:15

And those are all 5 teams at the bottom of the constructors’ right now. Most of them I’m not surprised at but Alpine definitely wasn’t a team I was expecting to be there. I do think that most of these teams are probably gonna be staying in the bottom five and we’re mainly going to see changes between those five times rather than have one jump up to the top. But there’s always a chance that there could be a jump from an unexpected team. We have 20 races left, reliability will play a part in it and we don’t know what upgrades everyone is planning to bring for the rest of the season.

20:50

I think that midfield battle and that bottom-of-the-table battle is definitely going to be interesting this year. It seems a bit closer compared to last year I think and I don't know. I guecss we're going to see how the upgrades play a part in everything and also driver confidence and driver morale. For drivers that are consistently not getting in the points is that going to weigh down on them? Is that gonna have an effect on their driving? How's the team contending with different wind tunnel times and the cost cap? So, we are going to have to wait and see what happens.

21:22

And hopefully we'll get a couple of surprises along the way. I would love that. Maybe we'll get an upgrade package that really launches a team right ahead of the rest of them. But we're gonna have to wait and see.

21:31

Make sure you come back next week where I’ll be talking about the top five teams in the championship and how their season is going so far.

21:40

Thank you guys so much and diiolch yn fawr for listening. Make sure you follow me on Instagram and tiktok @stewards_office. And I’ll see you guys the next time you’re summoned to the steward’s office.