Formula 1 car launch season 2023 is at its halfway point.
And there’s a strong argument that it’s so far been the worst one ever.
While teams’ increasing secrecy level over their new designs is understandable, and the challenge of how to balance that with fans’ and the media’s thirst for something new to see during the long off-season is not an easy one, the mix of underwhelming or even slightly deceptive launch approaches to date sets a pretty low bar for the five teams holding their events next week to (hopefully) clear.
We planned to bring you a mid-launch-season round-up of what we rated as the hits and misses of the car reveals so far. But frankly, we were scrabbling to come up with any hits. So here are the things that have underwhelmed us most.
STOP PRETENDING IT’S THE REAL CAR
“What you’ve seen today isn’t a total reflection of what will hit the track in a few weeks’ time,” said Christian Horner at the end of Red Bull’s launch.
We got that impression from the fact the car revealed in New York looked like a simplified 2022 Red Bull. And from the precedent of Red Bull using an extremely basic show car at its 2022 launch.
But it also had RB19 signage everywhere at this year’s event and called the car the RB19 in all the launch publicity.
Max Verstappen saying in the post-launch interviews “to be honest I haven’t seen it” when asked what he’d seen of the Red Bull that would run in pre-season testing just rubbed it in.
Horner suggested the launch was “really about launching the team’s aspirations for the year ahead”. That’s fine. Do that. Just don’t then say it’s the new car you’re standing in front of when you launch those aspirations.
ALPHATAURI: WAS THAT IT?
AlphaTauri followed Red Bull with a New York launch of its own, and was clear that while it would be the livery unveiled on a show car in America, it would show off its real 2023 model in renders at the same time.
It hit the mark with the renders – which are unlikely to show the full-spec 2023 car but certainly included some differences to last year’s design.
And it did hold an event in New York.
But fans hoping to actually see that New York Fashion Week event were left hanging (especially those in Europe who’d stayed up or in late for it given the timezone and timeslot).
“At The Appel Room of the Lincoln Center, key stakeholders in the fashion and motorsport world were able to capture an exclusive look at both the new car livery and upcoming fashion collection, whilst taking in the spectacular Central Park backdrop,” said AlphaTauri’s launch event.
Good for them. Fans at home got an admittedly stylish video clip, that ended abruptly after a brief glimpse of the new livery.
introducing, the Scuderia AlphaTauri AT04 & AlphaTauri AW23 collection! 😎
live from New York Fashion Week! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/EHhphyfq0u
— Scuderia AlphaTauri (@AlphaTauriF1) February 11, 2023
The media pack of 2023 car imagery and team interviews that AlphaTauri provided certainly did the job. And there was nothing wrong with the short video or the concept of an exclusive event in New York. But the implication of how it was all sold to fans was that they’d at least be able to watch that event – and it would have a bit of substance to it – while digesting the 2023 car images.
GULF: WAS THAT IT??
It wasn’t really Williams or Gulf’s fault that expectations were set a little too high for what might be revealed of their partnership at Williams’s 2023 launch event.
The trouble is Gulf is such an iconic brand for motorsport liveries that when a leak revealed that it had a presence on the Williams website’s partner page in the days leading up to the launch, fans’ hopes immediately went somewhat higher than just a small-ish Gulf logo sticker on a largely unchanged Williams livery.
Gulf’s suggested there’s a lot more to come, but the implication is that it’s saying that mainly in terms of ‘activation’ events – which is fair enough for a 2020s motorsport commercial deal. It’s not all about logos on cars anymore. Quite the opposite, in fact.
Considering this was a livery launch for a livery that hadn’t really changed, on an old car, to showcase a famous new partner whose presence on that livery felt pretty negligible, and all at a team whose new boss didn’t start for another fortnight, and which currently doesn’t have a technical director, the Williams launch event wasn’t bad and offered quite a lot of decent insight from the drivers and team personnel present. But it didn’t offer a blue and orange car.
ALL THAT RED BULL LAUNCH AWKWARDNESS
As a team fresh from one of its greatest seasons, aiming for a hat-trick of titles for its lead driver and a second straight constructors’ championship for itself this year, and with an enviable new engine partnership with Ford for 2026 to announce, Red Bull had a pretty open goal for its launch. And it skied that tap-in over the crossbar.
The lack of an actual new car was one thing. But there were plenty of glitches in the hour-long presentation itself, from sound issues that seemed to lead to the mysterious disappearance of one of presenter Giselle Zarur’s earrings, to the non-appearance of F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali.
“I don’t see him coming, but he is here. He’s here somewhere. Is Stefano coming? He’s on the way. He’s hiding,” said Marty Smith hopefully as the applause to welcome Domenicali petered out with no sign of the F1 chief actually appearing. He never did, so it was wise of Smith to quickly switch to interviewing the launch’s star turn Daniel Ricciardo again.
Ten minutes of the launch were devoted to interviews with four Red Bull athletes – freestyle skier Eileen Gu, snowboarder Zeb Powell, skateboarder Leticia Bufoni and fencer Miles Chamley-Watson – that covered both their own careers and their experiences of and interest in F1.
Red Bull’s breadth of sports involvement is astonishing and unique, and worth celebrating. But the length of this segment, and its positioning around the point in the launch where it seemed to be dawning on audiences that they wouldn’t be seeing a car for a very long time yet, led to a barrage of bored negativity from commenters on the live stream. The four athletes ended up undersold by how they were positioned in the launch, and deserved better.
THE RELATIVE HITS WEREN’T SPECTACULAR
Amid all the above, Alfa Romeo emerged as the undoubted champion of launch season part one – albeit rather in the style of winning a grand prix because all the frontrunners collided.
Alfa Romeo’s live launch featured its actual 2023 car, and a good mix of entertainment and insight from the drivers and bosses, and it was generous with social media video from its shakedown days too.
It wasn’t anything too spectacular, but it was clear, competent and professional, and fans needed a bit of that.
Given the frustrations of every other launch, we can forgive Alfa Romeo for seemingly accidentally putting a slide of its new car on its studio backdrop many minutes before the car reveal, and we can shrug off the fact its 2023 car render had a crazy floor design clearly intended as a decoy as just an inventive approach to design secrecy, rather than an annoying discrepancy with the launch event show car.
And Haas, perhaps still scarred by the fact its last fully-fledged pre-season car launch featured Rich Energy, kept things very simple. A livery reveal for new sponsor Moneygram that didn’t pretend to be on anything other than renders of the 2022 car, and then a 2023 car shakedown that it issued a reasonable amount of stuff from. That’ll do.
First miles on the clock ✅
Kev tallied his opening laps of 2023 in our Silverstone Shakedown day 💪🇩🇰#HaasF1 pic.twitter.com/mBbKNkkLCa
— MoneyGram Haas F1 Team (@HaasF1Team) February 11, 2023
McLaren, Aston Martin, Ferrari, Mercedes and Alpine – over to you. Our expectations are low right now, please surprise us.
Keyword: Everything wrong with F1 2023 launch season so far