Where is F1's Midfield?

    

 The 2023 season is only 2 races long but it seems like there is a big talent gap on the grid. Most years there or 2-3 teams that are considered contenders, 3-4 teams competing in the midfield and 3-4 teams bringing up the rear. The contenders are the teams that will scoop up most of the top 8 positions each race, the midfield are teams that will fight for those two remaining point positions and the bottom tier teams are lucky to get points for the entire season. With the early sample size we have seen in Bahrain, it looks like the competitive balance has shifted.

    Red Bull is in a league buy themselves. There isn't another team that you can put in the same category as them and say they have a realistic shot at the constructors or driver championship. I would lump Aston Martin, Mercedes and Ferrari in the same tier, but teams 2-4 aren't usually considered the mid field.

    McLaren is an utter disappointment this year, but there are a few other teams this year I don't see getting into double digit points, if scoring any points at all. Along with McLaren, I see Alpha Romeo, Williams, Alpha Tauri and Haas are the bottom teams that will be lucky to get a single point in any race.

Alpine is the the only team I could think of that doesn't have another team in its tier. I fully expect them to claim those last two point positions each race. Maybe one will and a random Hass will get the other, or a Romeo will slide into get a point one race. I think they are better than the bottom but there is still a big leap for them to make to be put into the next level with Aston, Mercedes and Ferrari.

So instead of having the 3 tier system most F1 season have, there are now 4

1. Top Dog

    Red Bull are 49 points ahead of second place Aston Martin after 2 races. We may get a good drivers championship fight between Perez and Max, but the constructor title might be wrapped up by the summer break. The only thing that can beat Red Bull is Red Bull. Both drivers had something pop up that concerned them enough to radio in during the race in Jeddah. Max was concerned about his driveshaft, which is what knocked him out of Qualifying, and Perez was concerned with his breaks towards the end of the race. There may be a weekend where one of them retires do to technical issues, or have a less then stellar qualifying, but I still see them winning the constructors title by well over 300 points clear of second place.

2. Battle for 2nd

    This is where the next 3 teams will be fighting for P3-P8. Just like Red Bull, these teams can have a bad weekend here and there but for the most part these 6 drivers will be chasing each other all year. It's this big number of drivers swapping these positions is another reason by Red Bull will have such a big lead over everyone. They are likely to get top points every week, while Ferrari May finish 3/4 one week and 5/8 the next. These three teams will be looking at Red Bull widening their championship gap every week while they're 3 team fight might be separated by 20 points all year.

3. Limbo

    This is Alpine, they are on the fence of being a team consistently getting points, or finding themselves just on the outside of the top 10 each week. They don't have a wide window of potential finishes. Outside of technical issues with them, I see Alpine finishing 9-12 every race. This would be a head of the midfield team if there were a midfield this year, but instead, they are a team that is just straddling good and bad, they other 3 tiers on this list are firmly in the good category or bad category.

4. Bottom

    These are the teams firmly in the bad category. There are already some point getters in this tier early in the season. Alfa has 4 and Williams and Haas each have 1 point to their team names. Alpha and McLaren will be hard pressed to score any points this season if things stay the way they are now. There may be some upgrade packages that team implement throughout the year that may boost them up to Alpine's tier, but if the top teams are running away with the points the way they will be for the first half of the season, further development on the 2023 may be dropped in order to focus on the development of the '24 car.

   The best thing that F1 can hope for is that the chase for the drivers championship turns ugly. Max and Sergio fighting it out wheel to wheel, maybe crashing each other out one race. Would love to see pot shots at one another in the media. I can see Jos Verstappen being a dick as usually and Sergio's fun loving dad finally losing his shit and wanting to fight Jos, something crazy like that. That's what I can hope for to save the season, if Max is up by 4 points on Perez going into the last race it will cause everyone to forget about how terrible the rest of the field was. You'd remember the 2023 season as the Max/Sergio battle, just like 2021 was the Max/Lewis battle. But if Max goes on a tear, winning the next 8 races in a row and having the driver's championship in hand with 5 races left, this season will go down as one of the worst, least competitive seasons in recent memory,