Hoping this year’s championship will be more like 2021 rather than 2022, Formula 1 is gearing up and welcoming us today to a new season at Bahrain Circuit, the first of 23 Grands Prix on this year’s calendar.

The FIA ​​is betting that with a new rule tamper and a longer than ever racing schedule, it will keep the sport’s fans who last year saw the comfortable dominance of Max Verstappen and Red Bull captivated from start to finish in the second championship. in the career of a young Dutchman.

This year, as almost every year, the organizers have made certain changes aimed at improving the safety of cars and closing the gap between … patricians and plebeians of the most popular motorsport in the world. Among other things, the FIA ​​has been very concerned about limiting the car swaying (porpoise) phenomenon that… has been eclipsed in 2022. Thus, some changes have taken place in the cars, such as raising the floor by 1.5 cm and with it the diffuser in order to control the vertical force of the car, for which special counters have also been installed to provide up-to-date data at any time.

At the same time, the hoop was strengthened, the protective arch that saved the life of the Chinese pilot Zhu Guanyu last year, and the minimum allowable weight of each vehicle was reduced by two kilograms, to 796 kilograms. New cars will have wider mirrors to help drivers see behind them better, and gear shifting regulations will be tightened, which will only be allowed under certain conditions. On the other hand, the fuel temperature control becomes softer, allowing it to drop even to 10 degrees Celsius, compared to 20 before.

An important change is the increase in the number of Grand Prix to 23, for the first time this year. The 2023 calendar was supposed to have 24 races, but for the fourth year in a row, China decided to cancel its own race, which was supposed to take place on our own Easter (April 16), due to problems with the coronavirus in previous months. The FIA ​​decided not to replace the Chinese Grand Prix, leaving a gap of four weeks between the third and fourth races of the year.

The US will have an important part of this year’s championship as it will host three of its races: in addition to the races in Miami in May and Austin in October, there is also a race in Las Vegas in November.

Improving the safety of single-seat cars and bridging the gap between… patricians and plebeians.

The FIA ​​is reportedly already in talks to expand the program further from 2024, starting with the Seoul Grand Prix in South Korea and then adding Kyalami in South Africa and Barranquilla in Colombia.

In addition, the number of sprints has doubled, Saturday’s mini-race serves as a qualifying round for places in the race grid, but also distributes points: this year the sprints have been increased from three to six, in the hope of the organizers that in this way they … will mix up the deck a little more , making the league more unpredictable.

Finally, on an experimental basis in two races during the tests, tire changes will be applied at the request of Pirelli: thus, in the first quarter, tests will be carried out with hard tires, in the second tests will be with medium rubber and the third with soft tires. A new wet tire is also expected after the Imola Grand Prix (May 21). Despite the changes, the favorite this year is once again the champion Red Bull, who completely dominated most of last year’s season. However, this year there is a chance that he will be challenged by Mercedes, which shows that a significantly improved Aston Martin is also capable of much.

The big question is how the new Ferrari will perform under Fred Wasser, who replaced the failed Mattia Binotto as team principal after an infamous and disappointing year, given the potential of the Italian team (12 pole positions but only four wins). 2021 and 2022 champion Max Verstappen with Red Bull looks hard to dethrone despite the ambitions of Charles Leclerc and George Russell for their first title. It will be a surprise if the Dutch champions do not take the lead in the middle of the championship.

Ferrari is generally seen as more capable of challenging Red Bull, with Leclerc and Sergio Pérez more mature than last year and looking to avoid the 2022 bugs at the Scuderia.

But Mercedes seems to have improved more substantially, correcting the wobble issues that have plagued it, although it still has more work to do to reach the top. By betting on Russell and Lewis Hamilton, he is preparing something very good. Aston Martin surprised former world champion Fernando Alonso to join the British team and they now look capable of building on the progress made in the second half of last season. He will be joined by Lance Stroll, who has suffered an injury.

In any case, as Formula 1 weathered the shock of the coronavirus, tickets to the circuit surpassed all previous earnings, and the Netflix series brought many non-sports fans closer to it, the new year is expected with huge interest.