From Bad to WORSE. McLaren's Struggles Continue

    

It seems like the constructors championship has already been wrapped up. I know there have only been 2 races but with this small sample size it looks like Red Bull may have this thing in the bag by the summer break. That's not to say there won't be some entertaining battles in the rest of the top teams. Alonso has turned into Aston Martin into a threat to win races if the Red Bulls happen to have an off night. Mercedes and Ferrari seem like they will be chasing each other on track all year, it will be a very close margin between 2nd and 3rd in the Constructors. It looks like Alpine will be top of the mid field, everything would have to break their way and have a few drivers retire from a race for them to sniff the podium but they have an exciting drivers duo with Gasly and Ocon, both race winners. Other than Alpine, it is going to be tough fo any other mid field team to score points this year. I really want Sargeant to get some points with Willliams but it will take a perfect race from him and a lot to go wrong with other teams for that to happen. And that brings me to the basement of the 2023 F1 season, MCLAREN!

    I'm a McLaren fan so the past few years have been tough to watch, the first 2 races of this year have been a whole new level of disappointment and incompetence.  

    Apparently, dropping Riccardo wasn't the quick fix answer McLaren was hoping for. I'm not saying he still deserves to be there and I would rather see Piastri than Daniel, but we can see the problems ran a lot deeper than who was in McLaren's second seat. 

    We didn't even need to wait until the first race to see that McLaren seemed to be in some trouble. When they revealed their 2023 car, they were quick to downplay expectations. Zak Brown confirmed that they had missed some development targets during the car reveal and that has been clear to see during this young season. The first race in Bahrain was a look into what McLaren might be dealing with the entire season. Piastri couldn't make it out of Q1 in his first career qualifying session, and he managed to complete only 13 laps in the race before having to retire the car. Norris didn't fair any better, his car was suffering with hydraulic issues which caused an embarrassing 6 stop race to continue to top up the car ever couple of laps.

    I had a little bit of optimism heading into the second race. I was hoping that McLaren would take the two weeks before Jeddah to try and figure out what went wrong in the first race and hopefully field a competitive car for the second race. Qualifying had my hopes up a bit. Norris was knocked out in Q3, but that was on him clipping the wall on the last turn and suffering damage, not on any technical issues he was saddled with. Unfortunately, they couldn't get him back on the track to get in a another lap so the disappointing finish on Saturday for Lando was not squarely of the team. Unlike Norris, Piasrti had a phenomenal Saturday. We got into his first career Q2 and Q3 and we ended up qualifying P9 for Sunday's race. 

    I was excited for the race, looking forward to see what Piastri could do from a mid field start. I didn't even take a sip of my drink or a bit of my chips before the race was over for Oscar. Piastri had a decent start, was able to make it around turn one with out incident, but coming out of turn two he clipped an Alpine and suffered front wing damage. He pitted at the end of the first lap and was out of contention for the rest of the race. Norris was starting from the back of the grid because of his Quali mess up, and he didn't get out of the bottom 15 the entire race. Norris finished 2nd to last of the drivers that finished the race, taking P17, while Piastri turned a P9 start to a P15 finish, not quite as impressive as Max turning P15 into P2.

    McLaren is going to make a similar decision that Haas had to make in 2021. There was a good chunk of the 2021 season that Haas just punted away to focus on the ned car and the new regulations. It turned out to be a goo move for them, they were consistently fighting for points in 2022 with Magnussen and even Schumacher getting some top 10 finishes. Haas went from dead last and zero points in '21 to 8th place and 37 points in '22. It was a good sign of improvement for the team, but that would still be a nightmare for a team with the pedigree that McLaren had. If they pack in development early in 2023 to focus on '24, there needs to be far more improvement than the 2 spot leap Haas made.

    I don't know what the answer is for McLaren. I like their driver pair. Norris is a top driver, definitely a potential world champion with a good car, that's how great of a driver me and many others think Norris could be. Piastri was great in F2, We saw that he can hang with the F1 mid field with that Saudi Arabia qualifying session. Zak Brown is the F1 super nerd/fan that has the passion I want in the guy running the show. Andrea Stella is brand new to the team so he doesn't have a great sample size with McLaren, but he was a very good track record in F1 as well. I would obviously take Max Verstappen over Oscar Piastri if I could snap my fingers, but realistically, I don't think their is a better driver available to have in the 2nd seat. It seems like the team that develops and builds the cars are where the issues are, but I couldn't name a single person on that side of things so I really can't be calling for anyone's heads. I trust that Zak Brown will make any hard decision that needs to be made in order to turn around the hellish beginning to the 2023 season.

    The next race is in 2 weeks in Melbourne. This is Piastri's home race so I would love to see him show out in qualifying again. I do believe he may drive a little more conservatively than he did in Jeddah, maybe backing out of a move to lose a spot rather than pushing, taking damage, and falling to last place. My prediction for Oscar is barely missing Q3 and finishing the race in P12. I think Norris will finally have a clean weekend in Australia. I think he will get into Q3, qualify P10 and finish the race in P10 to give McLaren their first point of the Season. This is the best case scenario for McLaren, I hope there aren't any mistakes that will continue their nightmare start to 2023.