F1: How close the 2023 season would be w/o Verstappen

McLaren F1 CEO Zak Brown comments on Perez and Verstappen:

“As much as Red Bull’s killing everyone right now… it’s really Max is killing everyone right now.”

“If they had two Sergio’s in the car, with all due respect, this championship would kind of be wide open.”

As we said below, “If not for Verstappen’s superior driving skill, the 2023 F1 season would be incredibly competitive and all the bull$shit out there about it being boring would be flushed away with all the Charmin.”

August 8, 2023

We hear all sorts of BS out there that F1 is not competitive with the new ground effects cars, so we decided to take a look at 2023 without Max Verstappen.

–by Mark Cipolloni–

The series cannot help that Verstappen is just so good, it is hard to stop him. Even when Mercedes had the dominant car (when Aldo Costa was designing them), Verstappen was still winning 2 races a year with an inferior Red Bull car.

A superior driver, in the wet or dry – Max Verstappen of the Netherlands driving the (1) Oracle Red Bull Racing RB19 on track during the Sprint ahead of the F1 Grand Prix of Belgium at Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps on July 29, 2023 in Spa, Belgium. (Photo by Francois Nel/Getty Images) // Getty Images / Red Bull Content Pool //

The same cannot be said for Lewis Hamilton now. The car is certainly important, but it is not everything. Verstappen is arguably the greatest driver in history, making F1 look boring.

So let’s take a hypothetical look at the 2023 season without Verstappen and flush all the bull$shit we hear down the latrine.

Race Wins

If we take Verstappen out of the running with 10 wins in 12 races, five different drivers would have won races from 5 different teams.

It would be the most competitive season since 2012 when we had 7 winners from 5 different teams.

Sergio Perez would have 5 wins instead of just 2.

Fernando Alonso, Hamilton and Lando Norris would have 2 wins each.

Charles Leclerc would have a single win.

Driver’s Championship

Perez would be leading in the points’ championship by 42 over Alonso with Hamilton 44 behind the Mexican – incredibly tight.

In fact, 7 drivers would still have a chance of being 2023 world champion with 10 races remaining.

Constructors’ Championship

Taking Verstappen, who is leading the Constructors championship by himself, out of the equation, Mercedes would be leading the championship by 58 points over Aston Martin, with the top-4 teams in contention for the title, and McLaren nipping at their heels in 5th.

Sprint Races

Taking out Verstappen’s 2 wins in 3 Sprint Races, and a 3rd place in the other, Perez would have 2 wins instead of 1.

In Sprint race points earned, Carlos Sainz Jr. would have 19 points to Perez’s 20.

Williams Progress

There is no doubt that Williams is in a rebuilding phase under James Vowles, and without Verstappen the team would currently have 20 championship points instead of just 11.

American rookie Logan Sargeant would have 1 point at Silverstone, and Alex Albon would have 19 points in 5 races.

Podiums

In addition to the drivers we mentioned above who would all have scored podium finishes in 2023, Sainz, Lance Stroll and Oscar Piastri would all have 1 podium each, instead of zero with Verstappen.

Conclusion

If not for Verstappen’s superior driving skill, the 2023 F1 season would be incredibly competitive and all the bull$shit out there about it being boring would be flushed away with all the Charmin.