Here’s a quick guide to F1’s biggest changes ahead of the 74th World Championship to keep up with what’s new for this season.
Drivers
There are six names in the new seats for the 2023 season, including three drivers who will start their rookie campaigns at the top level.
Formula 2 champion Oscar Piastri makes his debut with McLaren after a surprise departure from Alpine in a high-profile move involving a less experienced driver on the grid.
His arrival at the team came at the expense of Daniel Ricciardo, whose contract at McLaren expired a year ago. With no race seat for this season, Ricciardo has returned to his original home, Red Bull, to become reserve and demonstration driver for 2023.
Alpine had a vacancy to fill after Fernando Alonso decided to leave for Aston Martin, and the team signed Pierre Gasly after the courts ruled Piastri was under no obligation to race for them this season. Gasly’s former seat at Alfa Tauri has now been filled by reigning Formula E champion Nick de Vries, who impressed on his surprise Grand Prix debut at Monza.
The final grid change is at Williams, where American driver Logan Sargent will start the 2022 F2 season after finishing fourth as a rookie.
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Team leaders
There was a lot of musical chairs with team managers like drivers and some seats were not yet filled.
Mattia Binotto has kicked things off by stepping down from his position at Ferrari and Frédéric Vassur has been signed to take over from the start of 2023. That left Vasseur’s former team Alfa Romeo looking for a replacement – and they still haven’t found one.
But Alfa Romeo poached McLaren team principal Andreas Seid as Sauber’s new CEO to move to Audi, leaving McLaren in the same leaderless position as Alfa Romeo. But they immediately promoted Andrea Stella as their new teammate and made sure they didn’t spend a single day of the offseason without a leader.
However, the team has sacked team principal Jost Capito and technical director Francois-Javier Demaison and is yet to name replacements for those positions.
races
The 2023 F1 calendar is the longest in the series’ history, with 23 Grands Prix and six more Sprint races on the schedule from March to November.
The Bahrain Grand Prix resumes racing action, and will also hold pre-season testing, with the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix in the traditional season finale on November 26.
The Singapore Grand Prix runs around a slightly shorter layout, with construction starting on the part of the circuit around ‘The Float’ as the drivers drive past the water and then under the big stand. Following the multi-year development, the track will return to its original position once the work is complete.
In the year The return of the Qatar Grand Prix to Losail in 2021 brings the season to a record-long 23 events and the number of races has gone from three to six, in Baku, Red Bull Ring, Spa, Losail and Interlagos.
There is an expansion to three races in the United States when the Las Vegas Grand Prix joins the schedule as the final race of the year on November 18 – the first grand prix to be held on a Saturday in decades.
F1 teams will have two consecutive triple header races in May and June at Imola, Monaco and Barcelona. Then, near the end of the season, another triple header will be held in October and November across the American circuit, in Mexico City and Interlagos.
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New rules: financial, sports and technical
After major technical rule changes for 2022, teams will naturally be relieved to have relatively static regulations under which to design their 2023 cars.
However, this year there are some minor but minor changes in the technical regulations. At the start of last season, to reduce the severe aerodynamic porpoise seen with ground-effect cars, the FIA introduced heavier and more stringent floor flex tests to determine how much car floors flex under aerodynamic loads.
Teams will also have more freedom to change their identical gearbox designs for 2023 under the guidelines “if materials, processes or proprietary components are not available or their use is restricted for health and safety reasons.”
Mirrors have been enlarged to reduce rollover blind spots following the roll-hop on Zhu Guanyu’s Alfa Romeo in a horror crash at the start of the British Grand Prix.
In terms of the sports rules, there are also some minor tweaks to the rules. The FIA has clarified the procedure for applying grid penalties when there are a large number of drivers all serving penalties at the same event, such as Spa-Francorchamps and Monza last year.
Formula 1 will undergo an ‘enhanced qualifying’ test at two rounds this season. The qualifying format remains practically the same, but drivers will only be allowed to run hard tires in Q1, medium tires will be mandatory in Q2 and drivers will only be allowed to use softs in Q3. The system is designed to make F1’s tire compounds less wasteful and more durable on weekends.
DRS will now be activated after one round of green flag racing this season instead of the previous two rounds – but only during sprint races. If deemed successful, the FIA will roll out the change to Grands Prix in 2023.
The last part of the bylaws, the financial rules, will also be slightly revised for the new season. The 2022 budget cap is set at $141.2 million for the year through 22 rounds, but the team’s total cap will drop to $137.4 million in 2023 – assuming the current 23 rounds continue.
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2023 F1 season
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