Red Bull won the Australian Grand Prix at the Albert Park circuit in Melbourne, however the race pace numbers indicate that the chasing group of Aston Martin, Mercedes and Ferrari have closed the gap to the RB19 by half, in two weeks, mostly without major updates from any of the three teams. But it is not so correct to evaluate the gaps in this third round of the 2023 Formula One championship as the race took place at a very slow pace, almost as if it were an endurance race, in order to end the race with a single stop strategy, as Max Verstappen was able to easily manage the lead further thanks to the problems encountered on Saturday by his teammate.
If in Saudi Arabia, both the Dutchman and Sergio Perez had shown all the pace available, pushing the RB19s to the max while battling for the fast lap and victory, here the 25-year-old world champion had no rivals and even raced with a more conservative engine according to a rival engineer. On the other hand, Red Bull has no interest in winning every race by a large margin. Further back, Ferrari stepped up, with an SF-23 on the level of Aston Martin and Mercedes on Sunday. However, the Italian car will have to be re-evaluated in more relevant appointments from the point of view of wear and consequently in terms of performance, simply because the Australian race was slow and without noteworthy wear on any car.
Melbourne data analysis: Carlos Sainz better than Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton, Alpine is getting closer
Ignoring the comparison with Red Bull for the reasons listed above, the Ferrari of Carlos Sainz was the fastest car on the track and for the first time the SF-23 showed more speed than the AMR23 in the race, demonstrating that the work done in Maranello in last few weeks it’s starting to pay off. However, it should be emphasized that Carlos Sainz’s comeback was opposed by the race management done by the Hamilton-Alonso duo, therefore the improvements of the SF-23 with respect to AMR23 will certainly need to be evaluated again in the next races.
However, the work of the weekend was focused on finding the best compromise between qualifying and the race. Only the communication errors made prevented both Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc from being able to occupy a place in the first two rows of the grid. Since last year in Austria, Ferrari never improved going from qualifying to the race; this weekend the gap remained the same, even if the unexpressed three tenths from Red Bull are missing.
This season, the Maranello team lost almost half a second on average between Saturday and Sunday. A figure not so dissimilar to the 4 tenths seen post- technical directive in 2022 while before the summer break the F1-75 recovered a few thousandths in the race against the RB18. A positive aspect for Maranello is that the SF23 performed better than its direct rivals in the last sector, the slowest and most technical one, on Sunday.
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Aston Martin, on the other hand, is the car that loses the least between Saturday and Sunday compared to Red Bull, just a tenth of a second if we analyze the data from the first three rounds. In Melbourne, the difference in pace between the Spaniard and Lewis Hamilton was not enough for the number 14 to attempt an overtaking move, especially considering the deficit in top speed of the AMR23.
As for Mercedes, they pulled the ace up their sleeve on Saturday thanks to the rather favorable conditions for the W14 and also thanks to two good laps by George Russell and Lewis Hamilton: on Sunday this rewarded the seven-time Formula 1 world champion, who for the first time this season managed to finish on the; however the race pace was, albeit slightly, not as good as that of Aston Martin and Ferrari. A quantifiable deficit of around half a tenth compared to AMR23 and one tenth compared to SF23.
The surprise on Sunday in Melbourne was Pierre Gasly’s race up to lap 57. However, the Frenchman was helped by DRS, which was worth a good 7 tenths in Australia, allowing the Frenchman to keep a similar pace to Carlos Sainz in the second stage of the race. Alpine averaged 2-3 tenths behind as compared to the group of Hamilton, Alonso and Carlos Sainz and, like last year, the French team seem to be recovering after a poor start to the season, but important steps forward are needed to catch up with the teams in front.
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