Max Verstappen seemed to enjoy himself in Las Vegas after all (Picture: Getty Images)
Max Verstappen may have run away with the world title but there was more to this year’s campaign that the Dutchman’s dominance with Red Bull. Here’s a look at the highs, lows and defining moments of the 2023 F1 season.
Personality of the Year: Max Verstappen
Normally we would start this list with the Driver of the Year, but that seems pointlessly obvious. The stats en route to Verstappen’s third world title speak for themselves: 19 wins from 22 races, 21 podiums, 12 poles, nine fastest laps, four out of six sprint victories, and a 10-race consecutive GP win streak. He’s now third on the all-time list of most wins, and he’s barely 26.
Such dominance, combined with an inherent ruthlessness and entitlement, makes Verstappen a Marmite figure. But whether you’re a Gen-Z #TeamLH devotee or you got into F1 via Jim Clark, Max earned a lot of respect from all quarters (except, perhaps, F1’s owners) when he called the showbizification of the sport an unwelcome distraction (see ‘s***faced’ in Vegas).
Personally, I rather enjoyed Las Vegas. And, I suspect, so did Max in the end. He agreed to don an Elvis-inspired sparkly white race suit, and even sang Viva Las Vegas to his mechanics after he crossed the finish line.
What Verstappens in Vegas stays in Vegas, but throughout the season Max spoke his mind and never gave a damn about PR. Red Bull pay him £44million-a-year to collect the weightiest silverware and to sell cans of energy drink, but he doesn’t do it for the money or fame, just pure racing passion.
Genius award: Red Bull Racing
Obviously, Red Bull are the team of the year, but let’s call their performance what it was: genius. From designing and building the most dominant F1 car of all time – the RB19 won 93.8 percent of the races it entered – to beating every one of their rivals on strategy, operations and reliability, they’ve made it look easy.
Only Singapore saw them perform sub-optimally, and just like in 1988 – the only other season one team won all but one race – it was Ferrari that were there to cash in. Red Bull won the constructors’ title with six rounds to spare, beating Ferrari’s 2004 record of five to go.
Most improved team: Aston Martin
Right, now we’re getting to the slightly less predictable nitty-gritty. No one expected much from Aston Martin. For a start, they were seventh in the constructors’ championship in 2022, despite having a four-time world champion at the helm.
Fernando Alonso helped revive Aston Martin’s fortunes (Picture: Getty Images)
Sebastian Vettel was replaced by Fernando Alonso, who still had fire in his belly. But he also had a habit of picking the wrong team, and hadn’t won a race in a decade. Yet his skills and energy, combined with some excellent outside hires in design and engineering, meant Aston were a force to be reckoned with.
They started the season with the second-best car. They ended it with the fifth best, struggling to match Mercedes, Ferrari and McLaren’s development in no small part due to having to move to a new, much bigger factory in Silverstone. They can look back at their results, especially in the first half of this season, with pride. Alonso finished fourth in the driver rankings.
Lance Stroll was tenth. With a different driver to the team owner’s son in the second car, maybe they would have retained runner-up in the standings.
Rookie of the Year: Oscar Piastri
A young man truly deserving of his place in F1 is Piastri. There were people who wished to see the 22-year-old fail after he was seen to be disloyal to Alpine in their hour of need, where he was reserve driver, by defecting to McLaren. But the decision paid off for both the Woking squad and the Australian.
After a slow start, they developed the MCL60 into a quick car by mid-season. He qualified third at the British GP behind team-mate Lando Norris, and second for the sprint in Spa, where he finished runner-up behind Verstappen.
Piastri scored his first grand-prix podium in Japan – starting second and finishing third – and went one better in Qatar, winning the sprint and coming second in the feature. The best rookie performance since Lewis Hamilton’s with the same team in 2007.
Best race: Singapore
Red Bull’s one marmalade-dropper came in Singapore, where they could get neither car’s tyres up to temperature and Verstappen finished a season-worst fifth.
This left the door open for a floodlit battle royal between Carlos Sainz, Norris, George Russell and Lewis Hamilton. The top four were glued together on the last lap. A mile from the chequered flag and pushing for his best result of the season, Russell brushed a wall and kissed P3 – possibly P2, maybe even P1 – goodbye.
Less than 1.3 seconds separated winner Sainz from Norris and Hamilton at the finish line.
Carlos Sainz savours a special win in Singapore (Picture: Reuters)
Best newcomer: Las Vegas
After a shambolic start to the weekend featuring a loose drain cover, we were rewarded with a race that had all the excitement and high-wire vulnerability of Elvis in his ’68 Comeback Special. Such was the eventual success of the spectacle, aided by a properly thrilling as well as photogenic circuit and abetted by queues of A-list celebrities, the question is: where does this leave Miami?
Best overtake: Fernando Alonso on Sergio Perez, Sao Paulo
There were a number of Alonso moves that could be judged the best overtake of the year. The Spaniard on Hamilton in Bahrain is a definite contender. But none were quite as exciting as his never-say-die last lap in Brazil. Perez made a small mistake through the esses and the Spaniard didn’t wait for an invitation. He ripped third back from the Mexican by darting to the outside into the turn four braking area and slamming the door shut. The pair had a drag race to the chequered flag, with Alonso cutting the timing beam just 0.05 seconds ahead.
Fastest pitstop: McLaren
Red Bull were consistently the quickest team in the pits, but the single fastest stop was McLaren at the Qatar GP, with a 1.80s wheel change on Norris’s car that’s now a new world record.
We’ll give McLaren the additional bragging rights to Comeback of the Year too, with their upgrades from Silverstone onwards turning around what was a midfield car at best into a (sprint) race winner, and which secured seven second places and two thirds on Sundays.
Biggest crash: Lance Stroll, Singapore
Lance Stroll walked away from a huge crash in Singapore (Picture: Getty Images)
The Canadian pushed too hard in Q1 qualifying and lost his Aston Martin through Marina Bay’s final corner. The car buried its nose in the Tecpro barrier at more than 150mph, spun like a top and came to rest pointing the wrong way with steam billowing from its radiators and little of the bodywork or its appendages intact. Stroll was deemed fit to race but withdrew from the event. It would have shaken anyone up a bit.
Biggest disappointment: Sergio Perez
It wasn’t all perfect in Red Bull world. Although they finished the season with their drivers one-two for the first time, the difference in results and pace between Verstappen and Perez was hard to ignore.
He scored less than half Max’s points. One of his biggest issues was track limits, which saw laptimes deleted from qualifying and penalties added to his races. Also, the way Verstappen came from P9 to win in Miami – where Perez started on pole – broke him psychologically.
The Mexican had his moments early in the season, dominating in Saudi Arabia and Azerbaijan, but there was little to delight in the rest of his year.
He failed to get into Q3 nine times and had multiple crashes. The best two battles he had in the last few rounds, with Alonso and Leclerc, he lost both of them. He has a contract next year, but there is no shortage of suitors for that seat in 2025. It’ll take a brave man to share the garage with Max, mind you.
Hardest goodbye: Franz Tost
The Austrian has never been a particularly cuddly character, but he has nurtured several baby F1 drivers into fully-fledged race winners as principal of the Red Bull satellite team known as Toro Rosso and AlphaTauri since 2005.
He led them to sixth in the championship three times, in 2008, 2019 and 2021, and tutored Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly, Carlos Sainz Jr and Max Verstappen along the way.
After 18 years, he’s stepping down, although it doesn’t appear to have mellowed him. The 67-year-old branded his team’s strategists ‘stupid’ in Abu Dhabi for losing seventh in the championship to Williams, which effectively cost AlphaTauri £7.15 million. Guess there won’t be much left in the kitty for his leaving do.
MORE : Lewis Hamilton admits he questioned Formula 1 future during ‘frustrating’ season
It wasn’t all about Red Bull.
