The last round of the 2023 championship will be held in the United Arab Emirates, as has been a tradition every year since 201. Max Verstappen will try to claim victory number 19 of the year, extending his record of fifteen victories from last year – annihilating the previous records held by Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel.
The domination of the Red Bull RB19 found the perfect driver in the Dutchman, who rarely makes mistakes. McLaren, after a difficult race in Nevada, wants to reconfirm itself as the second force in the Abu Dhabi GP, while Mercedes and Ferrari will be fighting for second position in the constructors’ championship.
Of course, achieving this will be a disadvantage regarding hours in the wind tunnel in the first half of 2024. Aston Martin is growing after the latest updates, but the Yas Marina circuit may not be perfect for the AMR23. Further back, Williams and Alpha Tauri will battle for P7 in the standings, with Alfa Romeo ready to overtake the Faenza team in an unpredictable race.
Where can the two cars make the difference in Abu Dhabi GP? SF-23 versus W14
The UAE circuit features two main straights, where drivers can take advantage of the DRS, which will be important – should the engineers decide to adopt higher load settings.
Still, we could see a large variance in load to tackle the 5.28km of track 58 times during Sunday’s race, which will start at 2 pm Italian time.
The slow curves (4 in total) are much fewer than those present before the works carried out between 2020 and 2021, which sped up the track a lot, especially in the last sector. Now, there are four medium-speed curves in the last stretch, along with a slow curve and a fast curve.
There are five medium-speed curves, between 120 and 200 km/h, while the high-speed ones are ‘only’ two. All these changes have created many overtakes in 2022 and 2021 compared to previous years.
Red Bull will play the role of absolute favourite both in Qualifying and the race, but watch out for McLaren. On a difficult circuit like Las Vegas, the MCL60 still showed a good race pace after having suffered on the flying lap due to a sub-optimal strategy in Q1.
The Woking team is a candidate for the role of second-fastest, with Ferrari and Mercedes perhaps slightly behind – net of even minor unforeseen events, which are very frequent this season – in terms of performance but in a tight fight for second place in the championship builders.
Aston Martin had some good races in Brazil and Las Vegas, but in Abu Dhabi, it could again suffer the major compromises required, given the different types of corners.
Ferrari focuses a lot on Qualifying, with three Pole Positions in the last four races, even on complete circuits such as COTA and Mexico City. The SF-23 manages its tyres better by not stressing them in the first laps of the race – qualifying will be crucial
Last year, Charles Leclerc managed the one-stop better than Perez, with the soft compound potentially an added benefit for the Italian squad. On the other hand, Mercedes seemed to have found something with the package brought to Texas.
Still, they never managed to exploit the car’s full potential: for George, perhaps the Yas Marina circuit is not the ideal, but it is called to show its full potential.
The strategies will have to be spot on, and the set-up studied in the simulator and optimized between Friday and Saturday will have to guarantee the two English drivers a good car on the flying lap and then take advantage of better management of the tires on Sunday to gain positions on the Reds of Leclerc and Sainz.
Pirelli confirms the choices for 2022, with the C3, C4 and C5 protagonists of the last weekend of the year. Last year, both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc took advantage of a one-stop strategy, starting on the C4 and finishing the race on the C3.
The two-stop strategy seemed equally fast, especially for drivers and cars who were unable to extend tire life, and we could see a similar situation this year.
A loss of around 22 seconds flat in the pit lane doesn’t particularly favour one strategy or the other. The most stressed tyres will be those on the right side, especially the rear, as it is a track to be driven in an anti-clockwise direction.
Abu Dhabi GP updates: Alpha Tauri tries to attack Williams with the latest package, Alfa Romeo, with a new front wing
From the updates between Singapore and Qatar, the Alpha Tauri AT04 has substantially improved its performance, overtaking Haas and Alfa Romeo in the constructors’ ranking and getting closer to Albon and Sargeant’s Williams.
There are 7 points difference between the two teams, the equivalent of a seventh and a tenth position in Sunday’s race if Williams does not finish in the top ten. Daniel Ricciardo confirmed that “ this weekend we have some updates and (…) I know that one of the main areas that have been worked on is aerodynamic efficiency.
Some of these updates affect these areas.” In the Las Vegas race, the Faenza car, in its last race under the name Alpha Tauri after the change in 2020, suffered greatly from the fast sections of the American circuit. In the Abu Dhabi GP, this disadvantage should be less accentuated, and the higher medium and high-speed corners could help Tsunoda and Ricciardo.
There remains a glimmer of hope for Alfa Romeo, also in its last race as a Sauber sponsor after the start of the collaboration in 2018, and the goal of the Hinwil team is to catch up with Alpha Tauri itself by scoring five points more than their rivals.
A new front wing on the C43 will be the last seasonal update in a year that Alunni Bravi has defined as “intense, in which we have not achieved the results we set ourselves in January.”
Bottas and Zhou could also suffer on the two long straights of the Yas Marina circuit, but possibly also Pirelli’s choice of softer tires with which the Italian-Swiss single-seater has never gotten along in this two-year period.
Author: Andrea Vergani
Translation: Jaden Diaz-Ndisang
