Sergio Perez
Sergio Perez is entering his 13th season under a bit of pressure to get closer to his teammate. Over the course of his F1 career, Checo has scored 26 podiums, 1 pole position and 4 race wins so there’s no doubt that the Mexican is a fantastic racing driver, but you do have to question his gap to his Red Bull teammate Max Verstappen. In 2021, Sergio finished a crazy 205.5 points behind his teammate and he finished 149 points behind him last season. Also, Perez lost 18-4 in the qualifying head-to-head last season. Yes, Sergio Perez has been the best teammate to Max Verstappen since Daniel Ricciardo and right now, their partnership works. However, if Mercedes and Ferrari both become more competitive next season, Red Bull could potentially lose out on the constructors' title if Perez fails to close the gap to his double World Champion teammate. Also, Daniel Ricciardo is now Red Bull’s reserve driver so that’s going to put Perez under even more pressure.
Zhou Guanyu
Zhou Guanyu proved a lot of people wrong (including myself) last season with just how well he performed. Zhou walked into F1 with a lot of criticism about the fact that he got into Formula 1 despite failing to win the Formula 2 Championship in his 3 attempts. However, Zhou scored on his debut and he out-qualified his very quick teammate Valtteri Bottas 8 times. He also had a lot of bad luck and without that, he may well have finished higher up in the overall standings. Despite all of this, I still think he will be under pressure to keep his Formula 1 seat at Alfa Romeo for 2024. One of the reasons for this is people now expect something out of him so which definitely wasn’t the case last season and the second reason is a young French driver called Theo Pourchaire. Pourchaire is one of the favourites (if not the favourite) for the Formula 2 crown this year and he has been a Sauber project for a while now. Also, the fact that Alfa Romeo is leaving at the end of the year and the team is going back to being called Sauber makes it all the more likely that they would put Pourchaire in. Let’s see if Zhou can once again prove his worth.
Nico Hulkenberg
After a few years of being the reserve driver at Racing Point/Aston Martin, Nico Hulkenberg officially returns to the Formula 1 grid as a Haas driver. Over his 9 full seasons on the Formula 1 grid, Nico Hulkenberg showcased that he was very good at consistently finishing in the points and from 2012 to 2018, Hulk’s lowest championship finish was 11th and his highest was 7th so he was always around the same area. However, he struggled in the 2019 season at Renault (finished 14th with 37 points) and lost his seat in F1 as a result of it. He then went on to make a few substitute appearances for Racing Point in 2020 and Aston Martin in 2022 and he did pretty well. The reason I think he’s under pressure this season is he has to perform well against Kevin Magnussen. K-Mag 100% deserves to be on the F1 grid, but he also isn’t in the top category of drivers and he is someone that Hulkenberg could potentially beat. He’s also under pressure because he needs to repay the faith that Haas have put in him. Let’s see if he can do it.
Alice Powell
As of right now, nobody has been announced for the 2023 W Series Championship and it’s not even clear as to whether there will be a championship this year. If there is, there’s a lot of pressure on Alice Powell’s shoulders to become only the second-ever W Series champion. In 2019, Alice finished third in the first-ever season of W Series, 34 points off Champion Jamie Chadwick. In 2021, Alice Powell finished second in the championship, 27 points off Chadwick. In 2022, Alice finished third in the championship and she was a massive 57 points behind Chadwick who won her third title. Now that Jamie has moved to Indy NXT, this is a golden opportunity for Alice Powell to finally win her first W Series crown. However, it’s not going to be easy as Beitske Visser and Abbi Pulling will both push her all the way.
Yuki Tsunoda
Yuki Tsunoda is entering his third season in Formula 1 and this feels like a make-or-break year for the Japanese driver. Yuki struggled a lot in his first season in F1 (2021) and he was comfortably beaten by his teammate Pierre Gasly. In 2022, Tsunoda was closer to his teammate, but he was still beaten by him in both the qualifying head-to-head (13-9) and the overall championship standings (23 points to 12). Overall, it’s fair to say that Yuki hasn’t had the F1 career that let's say Red Bull had hoped for. The pressure then mounts on Yuki some more with the fact that he has Nyck De Vries joining him as his teammate. De Vries has only ever raced in Formula 1 once (Monza 2022), but he is a former F2 and Formula E World Champion. Given Yuki has been at Alpha Tauri for two seasons now, he has to beat Nyck otherwise he will most likely lose his seat.
Sam Bird
In my opinion, Sam Bird needs to improve this season. Sam was one of the top drivers in the first four seasons of Formula E, but he struggled in his final two seasons with Envision Virgin Racing before he moved to Jaguar TCS racing. Bird drove well and finished sixth in his first season with Jaguar and he also picked up 2 E-Prix victories, but he really struggled last season and he ended up finishing 13th in the championship, a good 129 points behind his teammate Mitch Evans. Bird does bring a lot of experience, but he doesn’t seem to be driving as well as he used to. It’s a big year for Sam as if he struggles again, Jaguar may well look elsewhere.
Esteban Ocon
Esteban Ocon has proven himself over the last few years to be in the category of the top 10 best racing drivers in the world. Esteban proved how quick he was in his first season with Racing Point back in 2017, but he ended up losing his Formula 1 seat for the 2019 season after Lawrence Stroll brought Force India and put his son Lance into the team. Esteban then joined Renault for the 2020 season and he has been there ever since. Over that time, he has become a Formula 1 race winner (Hungary 2021) and he managed to outscore his World Champion teammate Fernando Alonso last season. However, my favourite stat is the fact that in his 3 seasons at Renault/Alpine, Esteban has managed to finish in the points 65.6% of the time which I think is a really impressive achievement. Based on all of this, Esteban shouldn’t really be under any pressure in 2023. However, he has a new teammate for 2023 and that happens to be a fellow French driver known as Pierre Gasly. The fact that Esteban has been at this team for 3 seasons means he has to beat Gasly. If he wants to make sure that this team is his, he has to beat him.
Pierre Gasly
Sticking with Alpine, we have Pierre Gasly. Pierre Gasly proved himself in the 2018 season to the point where Red Bull promoted him to the main team. However, this didn’t work as Pierre really struggled for performance and he was dropped back down to Toro Rosso for the second half of the 2019 season. From there, he earnt a brilliant podium in Brazil (P2) and he basically had a career resurgence in the Alpha Tauri in the 2020 and 2021 seasons. In those two seasons, Pierre picked up 2 podiums including a race win at Monza (2020) and he finished in the points 64.1% of the time. However, he struggled a lot in the 2022 season and that resulted in him leaving for Alpine. The reason I think there’s pressure surrounding Gasly is I think he needs to prove himself against a really talented teammate. Let’s be honest, both Yuki Tsunoda and Daniil Kvyat weren’t the strongest drivers on the grid and when Pierre came up against Max Verstappen, he was absolutely destroyed. Also, Pierre will want to become the number 1 driver at Alpine and to do that, he has to beat Esteban Ocon which is going to be very hard. Both drivers have very similar career stats and if we’re being totally honest, Pierre will want to prove himself as the number 1 French driver in the world.
Dennis Hauger
In my 2022 F1 Season predictions, I put that Dennis Hauger would win the Formula 2 Championship and would drive for Alpha Tauri in 2023. It’s safe to say that neither of those things happened. In 2021, Dennis Hauger won the FIA Formula 3 Championship and moved up to F2 for 2022. His first season in F2 didn’t really go as planned as he ended up finishing 10th in the standings. However, he did win 2 races last season (Monaco and Baku) and he finished in the top 4 in five of the last 6 races of the season so he was clearly improving. The reason I think Hauger is under a lot of pressure this season is he has to win the F2 title this year to get himself onto the F1 grid for 2024. It is worth mentioning that Hauger struggled massively in his first season of F3 and then he won the title the year after so there’s no reason why he couldn’t win the championship this year. However, there are a lot of talented drivers in F2 at the moment and it’s unclear as to who is going to come out on top come Abu Dhabi. If Hauger wins the championship, there’s an opening at Alpha Tauri for 2024. If he doesn’t win the title, I wouldn’t expect Hauger to ever make it onto the Formula 1 grid.
Oscar Piastri
Finally, let’s talk about Oscar Piastri. In 2019, Oscar Piastri became Formula Renault Eurocup Champion. In 2020, Oscar became FIA Formula 3 Champion. In 2021, Oscar became FIA Formula 2 Champion! However, he couldn’t find himself a seat in Formula 1 so he spent 2022 as Alpine’s reserve driver. During that time, Alpine announced Piastri as their full-time driver for 2023 before Piastri shockingly announced that he wouldn’t be driving for Alpine in 2023. It was later announced that Piastri had signed a contract for McLaren for the 2023 Formula 1 season. The reason I think Piastri is under a lot of pressure is that he needs to prove that Alpine were wrong to not put him in the seat straight away. Considering McLaren and Alpine will probably be fighting each other for most of the season, Piastri has a chance to take points and money off of Alpine. The second reason why I think he is under so much pressure is the fact that he has been hyped up so much. If you look at his accomplishments, he’s pretty impressive. In fact, the only other 2 drivers that have won F2 and F3 back to back are Charles Leclerc and George Russell and they’ve proven to be two of the best drivers in the world. The third reason why I think Piastri is under pressure is Lando Norris. It’s fair to say that McLaren is Lando’s team. He was a McLaren junior driver for years and over his four years in F1: he’s scored podiums, pole positions, pushed Carlos Sainz massively and has destroyed Daniel Ricciardo. It’s going to be really tough for Piastri to beat his teammate and maybe even tough for him to get close to Lando.
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