The development fight in the 2023 Formula One season was “more cutthroat than it has ever been,” according to Bernie Collins.
The ex-Aston Martin strategist is now a broadcaster and analyst with a unique perspective on the no-holds-barred F1 battlefield.
Collins told Speedcafe on a recent episode of the KTM Summer Grill that the development race stepped up a notch last season.
“It’s been a year where the development race has been more cutthroat than it has been in other years,” she said.
“We see McLaren at the start of the year, really poor performance compared to what I certainly expected from them in the first races, and there was really aggressive upgrades, really bringing the car forward, and it’s pretty much always on the podium at the end of the year.”
“Then, the opposite appears to be true of, say, Aston Martin, where they started the year so strongly and then it appeared that the upgrades weren’t working and they had this massive slump through the middle of the year.”
“So the development race in these rigs seems to be really tight, and it seems to be really close between teams getting the car right, and in the right working window, or the car totally not working at all.”
That was a major storyline throughout the 2023 season, with some teams proving more reliable than others, but none, with the exception of Red Bull, was a sure bet.
Aston Martin, Ferrari, Mercedes, and McLaren can all lay claim to being the second-best car at some time during the year, while Alpine also performed admirably on occasion.
It was a year dominated by uncertainty in the middle, which had largely closed up by the conclusion of the year.
“When you look further back, so from P2 to P5, P6, those teams have had one race where one is faster, one race where another is faster.”
“With the exception of Red Bull and Max [Verstappen], the midfield, or rather the front of the battle, has been really right the entire year.”
“We didn’t know who was second in the constructors’ until the very end.”
“If we carry that into next year, we’re not going to have a really good year because those battles behind have been much tighter than we’ve seen in previous years.”
“The longer that we keep with this, these regulations over the next two or three years it’s going to continue, I think.”
Collins claims that this is due to F1 teams’ inadequate understanding of their car and development, resulting in extremely public gains and losses.
“The number of teams coming out and saying they don’t even understand why it’s not working is a bit like, from an engineering point of view, a bit shocking,” she said.
This forced some to abandon their plans in the middle of the season, while others, like as Mercedes, had problems that were more deeply embedded in their 2023 designs.
since a result, there is a genuine possibility of another reset in 2024, since teams that make big modifications risk falling behind in their effort to advance.
“Are they going to get it right?” Collins and Mercedes wondered.
“So far, they’ve had two attempts at this type of regulation that we now have, this really high performance [at] lower [ride heights], and they’ve failed both times.”
“How will that look in Race 1 next year?”
“And, again, will other people develop in the right or wrong direction over the winter?”
“So from now until February, you don’t have a read on whether what you’re doing is correct or incorrect,” she said.
“It’s always exciting to see who’s ahead and who’s behind in Race 1.” And we have no idea.”
