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This video is going to be a little lighter touch as my software had problems when I tried making
this away from home, but enjoy. It’s not a rant. It’s probably not a rant. Maybe.
So last week F1 announced that 2023 would feature a bumper 24 race calendar and the
fact that almost every outlet used the word ‘gruelling’ to describe it should
give a little idea of how this was received. Now, I’m sure there are lots of you who delighted
at this news, alongside the news that we’ll also have six sprint races alongside the 24
normal races. Some of you are always asking for more F1, while some of us who actually
want a little sit down once in a while ask “More!?” and “Are you not entertained?”.
Except you’re not Oliver Twist, you’re this dragon from The Hobbit, something I haven’t
seen or read but am hoping is a sufficiently accurate analogy that I refuse to look up.
You are rich with F1. So many races. So much content pumping through our bodies.
Anyway. With all these races – 24 weekends in a 52 week year, amounting to 46% of all weekends in
the year or a whopping two thirds of all weekends between the first and last races… some of us have
friends. Family. Board game afternoons. I’m halfway through a game of Gloomhaven, guys.
There’s films I want to see. Weddings. Barbecues. Greece. I’ve never been to Greece.
Anyway. With all these races, I thought we should quickly rate them all and assess the
calendar as a whole. And I mean quickly, I’m not gonna keep you here all day. I’ve got Gloomhaven
to get to. I want to watch See How They Run. So here’s the calendar as a whole. 19th of March
to 26th of November, so not venturing too far into the winter, once again.
First things to note. Belgium has moved up to July from September. Before the Summer Break, not after
it. This already crunches my gearbox. Belgium is my birthday race. I was born right at the
beginning of September, it’s a great race to enjoy around my birthday. Now Italy is my birthday race.
Less good, already losing two points for that. Before the summer break we have 14 races,
then we have 9 to finish up the run to the finale. In these first 14 races we have 3 back to back
weekend and one triple header. After summer we’ve again got 3 back to back weekends and
one triple header, but squeezed into just nine races, so I hope your autumn
isn’t busy. I hope you haven’t got a game of Gloomhaven to get to. Minus 2 points.
Now we’ve got the runaround nature of the calendar. There are four races in
the Middle East. Bahrain and Saudi Arabia are next to each other. That’s good. Plus 2 points.
Qatar could have been next to Abu Dhabi at the end, but they’ve stuck it between Japan and Texas,
which I guess is “on the way”. Unless you fly east of course. But that’s impossible
because the Earth is flat. Zero points on balance.
Races across the Americas are bunched from Texas to Mexico to Brazil, which is good – plus three
points, but we have this bizarre trip to Miami between Azerbaijan and Imola (with just a couple
of days to get from here to here) before heading back over to Canada for one weekend and then back
to Europe again for the Austrian Grand Prix. Minus five points. I got jetlag
just looking at the map. We only have three east Asian races,
and while Singapore and Japan are together, China is bundled with Australia. I have no
qualms with this particularly. Australia is a world unto itself, way down there in the Pacific,
Southern and Indian wash so popping China in with it makes a bit of sense I guess. Two points.
Now the tracks. Bahrain. It’s good. Even better since
they moved it to the nighttime. Racing is good, track provides a challenge and opportunity for
overtakes and strategy. I like that we go here. It loses points for going first though because
the atmosphere isn’t super amazing compared to, say, Australia, and I like the season to
kick off with a real buzz, which I don’t feel from Bahrain even after 19 years. Bahrain gets an 8/10
Saudi Arabia. It’s a silly track. It looks and feels like it was cobbled together in a week,
because it kind of was. It’s not great for overtaking, it’s too dangerous and unsighted
and is just so… WEIRD, considering F1 turns to rich oil nations to spend billions on making F1
look like the shiniest, most high tech sport on the planet with both bells AND whistles
and here we are on a piss poor temp track slapped on a beach. Also, 2022 highlighted
some actual dangers posed by the conflict with the neighbouring country it’s oppressing. Also,
you know the sportswashing of a country with serious human rights problems. That’s a thing.
Saudi hasn’t won hearts and minds yet. 3/10. Australia. Look, I’ve always loved Albert Park,
but a lot of that comes from the buzz of it being the first race. The atmosphere,
the festival fever of Melbourne and sports. The track itself is a little bit so-so in terms of
action and while it can often provide some surprises, I think I tied a lot of my love
into it being the debutant. The updates to the track this year were also pretty fine. 6.5/10
China! It’s back! After 3 years’ absence! Did we miss it? Hard to say! It’s a big wide Tilke drome
and will probably be pretty good fun with these new cars. Again, atmosphere wise it’s probably
going to be a bit quiet, especially as they fine it hard to fill the seats but the race will
probably be good, through the smog haze. 7/10 Azerbaijan. The race in Baku is such an
entertaining crapshoot that F1 has been lusting after new high speed street tracks ever since,
to limited success. It’s dangerous, but living just on the acceptable side of the edge,
apart from that death trap of a pitlane entry that they finally changed. Most
races here are good fun and unpredictable and we look forward to coming here. 8/10
Miami. It wasn’t that fun last year. Maybe it was that rubbish tarmac. If ever there was a
race that epitomised ‘never going to make fetch happen’, this is it. F1 has been desperate to
take us to Miami for years. And we eventually went. And it was in a car park. And the race
was the least interesting part of the weekend by far. It also made us sceptical about the
whole idea of expanding into America with more races there. Big oof. 4/10
Imola! I don’t like it! Sorry! I know it’s a classic but I don’t find it that interesting.
I love the cat though. The cat gives it a bonus point. 5/10, we probably shouldn’t be
going here if we’re not going to South Africa. Monaco. It’s been extended for a few more years
but it’s really looking like it’s losing its grip on F1 for the first time in…
ever. It’s the jewel in the crown of F1 but also completely incompatible with F1 as it is today.
Like a marriage on the brink of divorce, F1 and Monaco can ask which of them needs to change,
but ultimately they might be better off going separate ways for the good of the kids (i.e.
me). They had a good run. 4/10. It would be lower but qualifying is good and sometimes it rains.
Spain. It’s boring. We go testing there, which makes it even more boring. Get rid of it. 4.5/10
Canada. I love Canada. It’s not always an exciting race, but it does provide
spectable more often than not with a speedy pseudo-street track layout and some very tricky
chicanes and zips between the walls. 7.5/10 Austria. The Red Bull Ring is great fun.
It’s short and proves you don’t need to have 400 corners to be an interesting challenging
track. This track only has a handful of corners, but it knows how to use them. The elevation of
the Austrian geography provides braking zones up into crests, down into valleys and precise
rollercoaster needle threading. Lovely. 8/10 Britain. Silverstone is one of those old
circuits that actually still works somehow. It’s had regular investment, that helps but despite
being very flat and pretty old school, it’s a hell of a challenge and still provides spectacle. The
atmosphere is excellent, too, and I hope that stays once they’ve priced all the poorer people
out of buying tickets with the absurd avarice we saw this year. 8/10. It lost half a point
because the last three corners are terrible. Hungary. You know, when I started watching F1
in the last 90s, Hungary was always the race you dreaded. It was dull. There was no overtaking,
the dust made it too slippery. It was a bit of a nothing. But more recently it’s actually
pretty ok? I can’t say I get that excited by it but I don’t dread it. And somehow it’s ended up
being one of the longest continually present races on the calendar. I’d still drop it in a
heartbeat though to get Hockenheim back. 5.5/10 Belgium. It’s great, it’s fast, it’s through an
actual landscape. It has seriously unpredictable weather, which can be both extremely fun or
extremely unfun. There’s very few tracks like it these days (though I’d suggest the Red Bull Ring
has similarities in feeling like a real european road). It’s not the challenge it used to be,
sure, but it would be a shame to lose this rather unique race track. 8.6/10
The Netherlands. Zandvoort. It’s not really shown itself to be a good bedfellow to F1 racing so far,
though the banking is a nice unique addition. It’s extremely narrow so ends up pretty frustrating at
the best of times. Can’t fault the atmosphere though, but the Orange Army can and do bring
their energy to many places across Europe so I wouldn’t miss Zandvoort specifically. 5/10, sorry!
Italy. Monza is another place that brings a uniqueness to the calendar lost from other tracks,
like original Hockenheim and such. Lots of straights broken by a few corners,
this is a high speed track with flat rear wings and full throttle action. The Tifosi are wild and,
while the Orange Army rivals their energy these days, it’s always fun to see them out
in celebration or commiseration under that podium. The racing however… varies. It can be really fun
and surprising… or it can be dull. But it’s never a snoozefest, because it’s the shortest race at
about 80 minutes. No time to sleep! 7/10 From the shortest race to the longest.
Singapore. Always creeping up on and sometimes overshooting the 2 hour limit,
Singapore is the closest F1 gets to an endurance race. With 23 corners and barely any rest in
sweltering humidity across those two hours, Marina Bay can be a drivers breaker and a car breaker. We
tend to see accidents in the final third of the race from drivers simply losing concentration.
It’s struggled to provide good wheel to wheel action but strategy and perseverance can often
come into play. It’s lost its gimmick of being the only night race but it’s still quite fun. 6.3/10
Japan is back! One of the few races on the calendar where Europe actually has to get
up at a weird time, still, Japan is a classic racing circuit full of high speed corners and
a real challenge - kind of in the Silverstone bracket. It suffers a little by not being able
to have DRS down the long back straight as 130R is too dangerous to have it left open, but it’s
still a hell of a circuit. Very very tricky to overtake on though, but still worthy of an 8/10
Qatar! One of those places making a name for itself on the world stage by building
international sporting events of the back of indentured servitude and huge mortality and
morbidity rates among essential slave workers, hooray! On the racing front, Losail as a track
was… fine. Better than we thought it would be on paper. 6/10 I guess. I don’t know.
America. This one is just the USA Grand Prix, despite being one of three races in the USA.
This is the one. The USA one. And it’s a great track, even if it’s borrowed all its bits from
other tracks. It works. They built in elevation, fast corners, overtaking spots, tricky infields.
It’s a fun track and if the drivers could stick to track limits it would be even better.
Of all the American tracks, I’d hate to lose this one, though I imagine Liberty will soon be
using Miami and Vegas as leverage to jack up the hosting fees and price them out of the calendar.
Which would be a shame if it happens. 7.8/10 Mexico. It’s fine! I don’t actually have too much
to say about Mexico - I don’t have particularly strong feelings about it. Love the run through
the stadium, of course. Using the stadium as the hub of the circuit celebration is a great
touch. The extreme elevation playing tricks on the engines and aerodynamics is a cool part of running
here and ties in well with that part of the year when the cars are starting to fall apart. 7.3/10
Brazil. Man, this place just works doesn’t it? Another simple track with very few corners,
but maximumising the geography to extreme effects. Overtaking - a dream. The
atmosphere - a fanfare of frivolity. The challenge - rollercoasteresque. Love it.
Shame we don’t have any Brazilian drivers. 9.1/10 Las Vegas. This one is hard to judge before it
happens but I do hope it’s actually a good track with interesting racing cause I can’t
go through another Miami weekend where it’s all parades and preludes and dance numbers and then
90 minutes of racing as pathetic as a toddler vs tortoise oil wrestling match. I want to see more
than lights. I want to see Formula 1 racing. A tentative, pessimistic 6.5/10 but hoping for more.
And finally we finish in Abu Dhabi, as I guess we’ve got used to now. It’s always
a bit of a damp, limp, soft, moist, meagre, wanting, tepid, half-baked, loveless, grey,
yawnworthy venue for the finale of what’s supposed to be the creme-de-la-creme of
circuit racing but here we are. This is where the money comes from. Brazil is obviously the
best place to hold the finale but they don’t have a hotel that lights up, so. Here we are.
The modifications actually did help make it a better track and we’re glad for that but
every time we come here I keep thinking about it being the most expensive track, built from
scratch on an artificial island, and how it could have been anything at all and they completely
dropped the ball, screwed the pooch, kicked the baby, ate the slug, burnt the bread. A shame.
5.5/10. It loses a point for being the finale when a better venue could have
seen us out. If it was anywhere else I might have been less bothered by it.
As for 3 races in a single country… I’m not that bothered about that in principle
as it’s a massive, diverse country in its people and geography so three races isn’t
that many. And while we’re still missing a whole continent, I’d rather chuck out Imola
and Spain to make more room before slimming down the US races… if they’re good. Make them
good. So no points docked for more races in USA But still not having a race in Africa when we
probably should have 3 is worth minus 10 points. I’m docking a further two points for F1 writing
dates the American way round on their website. The worse way round.
I’m also docking 3 points for every race over the ideal number of 20. 20 races is
the best number of races in a year. It’s lots of races, but not so many races you think ‘christ
alive I’m a bit tired of F1 now. 24 races and 6 sprints? Starters AND dessert? I’m gonna
have to take a Rennie after all that.’ So that’s another 12 penalty points.
So the 2023 calendar gets a score of 128.1, which I’m sure no one can disagree with. I’m
sure if I all asked you to give the F1 calendar a score you’d also say 128.1.
Maybe 128.2 if you were generous. So thanks for watching this
intermission of a video. Back to our normal schedule after Singapore! Also I stream F1
Manager now. Did you know? Check out the playlist for the VODS ok BYEEEE
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