Back on February 18th, 2023, I released an article about My 2023 Formula 1 Season Predictions. We’re now at the end of the 2023 F1 Season so it’s time to see how good or (most likely) how bad I did. It’s also worth mentioning that there are three sections to this as I did 10 Starter Predictions before I predicted both the Drivers’ and Constructors’ Standings. Right, onto the Reacting!
10 Starter Predictions
My first Starter Prediction was “There will be 6 different Race winners this Season”. We’re already off to a great start as there were only 3 different winners in the 22 Races this Season (Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez, and Carlos Sainz). The even sadder thing is even if I included the 6 Sprint Races, I’d still only get to 4 Race victors (courtesy of Oscar Piastri).
The second Prediction I made was “6 different teams will achieve a Podium finish in 2023” and that was actually spot on as Red Bull, Mercedes, Ferrari, McLaren, Aston Martin, and Alpine all featured on the Podium at least once this year.
My third Prediction was “The Driver who wins the opening round of the Season in Bahrain will go on to become World Champion”. The driver who won the opening Race of the Season was none other than Max Verstappen so that’s another point for me (I’m very happy right now).
My fourth Prediction was “Aston Martin will join the battle for the Best of the Rest with Alpine and McLaren”. Technically, Aston did join the fight to become the “Best of the Rest”, but not against the teams I expected.
My fifth Prediction saw me say “Every Driver will score at least 1 Point this Season”. Unfortunately, this Prediction was incorrect as Nyck de Vries failed to score a point. The irony of this is more drivers actually scored a point than I was expecting (21 to 20).
My sixth Prediction was “The Winner of the 2023 FIA Formula 2 Championship will have a seat in Formula 1 for 2024”. Annoyingly, this was wrong and I’m not very happy about it as Theo Pourchaire deserves a seat on the F1 Grid in my opinion.
My seventh Prediction I put was “Daniel Ricciardo will be announced as a Red Bull Driver in 2024”. I wasn’t too far off with this one, but I was still wrong!
My eighth Prediction was “7 Teams will score a Top 6 finish (in the Race) this Season”. Unfortunately, only six teams achieved this and even if I were to include Sprint Races into this, I’d still be wrong as it would go up to 8 (Williams and Alfa Romeo were the only two teams to never finish a Race/Sprint in the Top 6)!
My penultimate Starter Prediction was “Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez will collide at least once this season, resulting in both Red Bull’s retiring from the Race”. The second one very much didn’t happen, but I wasn’t too far off with the first part of this as Max and Checo came pretty darn close to whipping each other out in the Austrian Sprint.
My tenth and final Starter Prediction of 2023 was “Sergio Perez will Retire at the End of the Season”. This again didn’t happen, but it wasn’t the worst Prediction I’ve ever made!
Drivers’ Championship
P20: Logan Sargeant
I said at the start of the year that I felt like Logan Sargeant deserved his spot on the Formula 1 Grid, but he was unfortunately stepping into the slowest car in the field. None of that ended up coming true as Williams had a pretty decent car this year that Logan just wasn’t able to get to grips with and he ended up finishing 21st in the Championship with just 1 point.
P19: Alex Albon
I definitely expected Williams to be poor didn’t I! Alex Albon has had a great 2023 Season which has seen him score 27 points and finish 13th in the Standings. I can admit that I firmly got this one wrong!
P18: Yuki Tsunoda
This was arguably an even poorer Prediction than Alex Albon! Yuki Tsunoda ended up finishing 14th in the Championship with 17 points, but the real problem is that I not only said that this would be Yuki’s final year in Formula 1, but I also Predicted Tsunoda to get beaten by his teammate Nyck de Vries (both things weren’t even close to happening).
P17: Zhou Guanyu
Due to having a worse best result, Zhou Guanyu ends up finishing 18th in the Championship rather than 17th! I was mostly right with this Prediction, but I was wrong with the fact that I kind of expected Zhou to get dropped for Theo Pourchaire heading into 2024.
P16: Nyck de Vries
Eye, eye, eye! I expected Nyck de Vries to beat his Alpha Tauri teammate this season, and in the end, Nyck got dropped after just 10 rounds and he’s ended up finishing 22nd in the Championship without a single point to his name. All of this is disastrous!
P15: Valtteri Bottas
My first correct Prediction of this section of this article as Valtteri Bottas did end up finishing 15th in the Drivers’ Championship with 10 points to his name. I’ll go more into detail on everyone’s season in my “Driver Rankings” article, but I will say that Bottas has weirdly had a poorer season than I was anticipating even though he’s finished in the exact same position as I Predicted.
P14: Kevin Magnussen
Kevin Magnussen had a much poorer season than I anticipated as he ended up finishing 19th in the Championship with just 3 points to his name (all P10’s). The crazy thing is that whilst he has been pretty poor this year, this Prediction being wrong isn’t all down to him.
P13: Nico Hulkenberg
I’m actually decently happy with this Prediction. Whilst Nico Hulkenberg may have ended up 16th in the Drivers’ Championship, I don’t feel like too many people predicted Nico to finish ahead of his Haas teammate Kevin Magnussen so I’m actually taking this as a small little win.
P12: Lance Stroll
I was completely wrong with this Prediction as Lance Stroll ended up finishing 10th in the Championship. However, that’s not all as I also said Lance will have a positive season and besides a few really good-to-great performances, it hasn’t been a particularly good season for the Aston Martin Driver.
P11: Oscar Piastri
Oscar Piastri ended up finishing 9th in the Standings after a very impressive Rookie Season which even saw him take victory in the Qatar Sprint. I actually said in my Predictions article that I thought Oscar would do well in 2023, and I was only putting him this low as I didn’t expect the McLaren to be super competitive. When you take that into consideration, this Prediction was actually alright.
P10: Pierre Gasly
Pierre Gasly actually finished 11th in the Championship so on that basis, I wasn’t too far off with this Prediction. However, I did predict Pierre to finish behind his Alpine teammate which was wrong (by just 4 points). So all in all, I came close, but I was still a while away!
P9: Fernando Alonso
Oh boy, I didn’t expect Aston Martin to be as quick as they were (certainly at the start of the year). However, I did say in my Predictions that I thought Fernando Alonso would have a very good first year with Aston Martin and that proved to be true so whilst the Prediction was/is wrong, the belief in Fernando wasn’t.
P8: Esteban Ocon
Yeah, this wasn’t a great one! I expected Esteban Ocon to consistently perform well in 2023 and that didn’t happen. I also said that I thought that Esteban would come pretty close to finishing 7th in the Championship and that was incredibly wrong as Ocon finished 12th in the Standings, some 142 points behind P7! I will blame Alpine more than Esteban on this one, but it’s still not great whatever way you look at it.
P7: Lando Norris
I’m actually quite satisfied with this Prediction as Lando Norris ended up finishing 6th in the Championship and he was only 5 points ahead of 7th (he was also only 1 point behind 4th though). One thing I did get wrong is I wasn’t expecting McLaren to be as quick as they were (certainly from Austria onwards), but that also kind of shows just how much belief I have in Lando as a racing driver and future World Champion (if he’s in the right car).
P6: Sergio Perez
I don’t really know what to say anymore! Sergio Perez ended up as the Runner-up in the 2023 Formula 1 Season so I was very wrong on that front. However, I said that I felt that Sergio would be around 160-200 points behind his teammate by the end of the season. Having said that, I was also wrong about this as Checo finished a ridiculous 290 points behind his Triple World Champion teammate so I’m ultimately blaming this bad Prediction on Ferrari and Mercedes (and to a lesser extent McLaren and Aston Martin).
P5: Carlos Sainz
Carlos Sainz had a decent 2023 Season which saw him finish 7th in the Championship. The frustrating thing about that as well as my Prediction being wrong is without a disastrous final round of the season in Abu Dhabi, Carlos would’ve finished 4th. Anyway, on a positive note, I did say that Sainz would be much closer to his teammate this season and I definitely feel I was correct on that one.
P4: Charles Leclerc
On countback, I’ve got this Prediction wrong as Charles Leclerc actually finished 5th in the Championship (level on points with 4th) and I just give up now!! Anyway, I was certainly right when I said that I couldn’t see a world where Leclerc would fight for the Championship, but I don’t think I expected Charles to go the entire year without winning a single Race.
P3: Lewis Hamilton
I don’t know how to feel about this Prediction as technically, I was correct as Lewis Hamilton ended up third in the Standings. However, I predicted that Lewis would win races in 2023 which didn’t happen and most importantly, I predicted Hamilton to get beaten by his teammate again, something that very much didn’t happen (Lewis was the leading Mercedes Driver by 59 points)!
P2: George Russell
Oh dearie, dearie me! I think this is probably my worst Prediction yet (which is saying something) as George Russell finished 8th in the Championship and exactly 400 points behind this year’s World Champion! I also labelled George as one of “The Top 5, maybe even the Top 3 Best Drivers in the World” and after this year, I won’t be saying that again any time soon! Absolutely useless (I’m talking about my Prediction)!
P1: Max Verstappen
At least I got this one right?! Max Verstappen did indeed win the 2023 World Drivers’ Championship in arguably the most dominant season in Formula 1 history. However, I wasn’t fully correct as I said that Max would win the Championship in Mexico City when he actually sealed the deal in the Qatar Sprint (2 rounds before). Also, I said that Verstappen would (only) win 13 Races over the course of the 2023 Season and this was well off as the Triple World Champion recorded a ridiculous 19 wins (with one less round I might add). Now I’m very excited to see his average in this year’s Driver Ratings.
Constructors’ Championship
P10: Williams
We’re already off to a great start here as Williams actually finished 7th in the Constructors’ Championship with a “massive” 28 points. I really expected Williams to struggle once again so fair play to them and to James Vowles who’s done a terrific job in his first season as (a) Team Principal.
P9: Alpha Tauri
For a long time, this Prediction looked like it was going to be wrong and that Alpha Tauri were actually going to finish at the bottom of the Standings. However, a positive end to the season saw them actually finish 8th in the Championship, and they were only 3 points off 7th.
P8: Alfa Romeo
I was also wrong with my Prediction for Alfa Romeo as Alfa actually finished 9th which is even worse than I actually first feared for them. They simply haven’t been good enough and they’ll be hoping for a much better 2024 campaign, especially now they’re rebranding back to Sauber.
P7: Haas
This was a bad one! I actually wrote down the words “I think Haas are going to have a pretty positive 2023 Season”. That absolutely didn’t happen as Haas finished last in the Championship thanks to a car that had a talent for wrecking its tyres (that’s not a talent you want to have in Motorsport)! What’s even worse is the fact that I said “Haas now have two drivers who are very capable of picking up points when given the opportunity”. Firstly, neither Hulkenberg nor Magnussen really ever had any opportunities to score points but secondly, K-Mag wasn’t very good at all this year!
P6: Aston Martin
This is a very odd Prediction to react to in the sense that I was completely wrong when it came to where Aston Martin would finish as they ended up 5th. I was also wrong with the fact that I said that Aston would be fighting in the midfield when in actual fact, the Silverstone-based team achieved 8 Podiums in 2023. However, the one thing I was correct with was my statement about feeling like “Aston Martin are going places”.
P5: McLaren
It’s funny that I said that McLaren would either have the 4th or 6th fastest car in 2023 because they arguably never had either. McLaren started the year as arguably the worst team on the grid before they spent most of the mid-to-end part of the season as Red Bull’s closest challengers. Add in the fact that McLaren ended up 4th in the Constructors’ and you can safely say that I was once again wrong.
P4: Alpine
Speaking of being wrong! Alpine were nowhere near finishing 4th in the Championship as the French team finished 6th in the Standings and a massive 182 points behind P4! I also put that "I expect Alpine to come out on top as the best of the rest in Formula 1” and that’s only correct if you count 6th as “Best of the Rest” (which you shouldn’t)!
P3: Ferrari
I’ve actually got one right! The reason why though was wrong as I expected a certain German manufacturer to be a lot further up the road than they actually were (Ferrari were only 3 points off finishing second). Still, it’s a small victory.
P2: Mercedes
It’s back-to-back correct Predictions as Mercedes did end up finishing second in the 2023 Constructors’ Championship. However, I was also incredibly off when I said “I think Mercedes will have an outside shot of winning the Constructors’ Championship going into Abu Dhabi”. That definitely didn’t happen as not only were Mercedes fighting Ferrari for 2nd heading into the final round of the season, but they were also a stupid 451 points behind the Champions! Just make things even worse, Mercedes were closer to P10 than P1!
P1: Red Bull
On the plus side, I was correct to predict Red Bull as the 2023 Constructors’ World Champions. However, saying that it was going to be a close fight is beyond wrong as Red Bull smashed the competition and scored more points than Mercedes and Ferrari combined (860-815)!
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