F1 2023: Daniel Ricciardo’s comeback, Hungarian Grand Prix preview, AlphaTauri, McLaren, research and development, upgrades, Hungaroring

If you had to choose a car with which to rebuild your once sterling reputation as one of the sport’s most formidable racers, you wouldn’t choose the 2023 AlphaTauri AT04.

The Faenza-built car has been one of the least impressive so far this season.

In qualifying in dry conditions it’s been on average 1.594 off the pace and only 0.008 seconds ahead of the Alfa Romeo, the outright slowest car.

It’s scored just two points for the whole year, putting it solidly last on the constructors championship table.

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The car is so bad that team principal Franz Tost said he’d lost faith in some of the key designers who’d built it.

“I don’t trust them anymore,” he said earlier this season. “During the winter months they told me, ‘The car is fantastic, we’re making big progress’ and then we come to Bahrain (testing) and we are nowhere.

“[We don’t have] enough downforce, therefore the car is unstable under braking, overheating the rear tyres, washing out at the apex, bad traction — everything what you need to do a good lap time.”

You wouldn’t describe these as optimal conditions for a comeback.

But these are the tools Daniel Ricciardo has at his disposal to prove he’s still got what it takes to race with the best of them.

“I’m excited about it,” he told the F1 website. “I think it’s challenge for sure to jump in and try to hit the ground running, but I feel like I’ve also been through a lot in the last year or even the last few years where I’m not really scared of anything that’s going to be thrown my way.

“I actually really do like the challenge. I say ‘challenge’, because yes, it will be a challenge, but I don’t know if I’d have it any other way.”

The situation isn’t completely bleak.

The field this season has been tight enough that the racing is unpredictable. Driver performance is making a huge difference.

AlphaTauri is also in the middle of an upgrade cycle to bring more downforce to the car. It made its first step at the British Grand Prix, where the team said it achieved its downforce targets despite lacklustre results, and there’s more to come this weekend in Hungary.

And if you were to pick a racetrack to make your AlphaTauri debut, the Hungaroring would probably be it.

WHERE HAS THE CAR BEEN QUICK?

Acknowledging that ‘quick’ is a relative term, the AT04 has been at its best when it can lean on its slow-corner performance, where the drivers can use the loose rear axle to their advantage to rotate the car.

In terms of qualifying pace, the car was at its best around Monaco, the slowest circuit of them all, and Azerbaijan, where half the track is super tight.

These were the venues of the car’s only two Q3 appearances to date, both courtesy of Yuki Tsunoda.

Tsunoda scored points in Baku and would’ve done so again in Monte Carlo were it not for a brake problem.

The team’s only other score for the year came in Melbourne in the late-race restart carnage.

Consider the below average qualifying gaps for the season.

Dry qualifying, season to date

7. Williams: (1.302 seconds off pole)

8. Haas: +0.043 seconds

9. AlphaTauri: +0.292 seconds

10. Alfa Romeo: +0.300 seconds

Now compare those numbers to the average qualifying times for Baku and Monte Carlo.

Qualifying, Azerbaijan and Monaco

7. AlphaTauri: (1.048 seconds off pole)

8. Williams: +0.341 seconds

9. Alfa Romeo: +0.610 seconds

10. Haas: +1.181 seconds

Why does that bode well for this weekend’s race?

The Hungaroring has the exaggerated nickname of ‘Monaco without the barriers’ owing to its tight and twisty layout. Monte Carlo it is not, but it’s somewhat useful to think of Budapest as the permanent-circuit version of a street track.

Cars with good low-speed performance tend to do well in Hungary, where there are few straights to test top speed but plenty of corners to make demands of a car’s dynamics and a driver’s ability to get into a rhythm.

It’s a very rough form guide, but it’s a track at which AlphaTauri might be optimistic about collecting one of its better results for the year.

WHERE HAS THE CAR BEEN SLOW?

But we’re talking optimism by degrees, because there’s no escaping that the AT04 is one of the grid’s slowest cars.

Despite upgrades brought to the previous round in Britain, the car was the least competitive of the field in qualifying and race trim.

It’s hard to compare times directly given the changing track conditions during qualifying in Silverstone, but the races in Austria and Spain are both decent tests of high-speed, high-downforce performance.

Qualifying, Spain and Austria

7. Haas: (0.825 seconds off pole)

8. Williams: +0.171 seconds*

9. Alfa Romeo: +0.444 seconds

10. AlphaTauri: +0.526 seconds

Only Austria has been used for Williams in the numbers above given Alex Albon competed in qualifying in Spain with a damaged car.

It’s too far back to use as a comparison, but the rapid Saudi Arabia track also showed up the AlphaTauri car as lacking high-speed, high-downforce performance.

It suggests a lack of aerodynamic efficiency, which is generally the problem for cars near the back of the field, where the trade-off between downforce and drag is more acute than it is nearer the top of the order.

It means a track like Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps, one week after Hungary, will likely be difficult for AlphaTauri given its high-speed nature — pending the finalisation of the upgrade package it’ll complete this weekend.

ISN’T THIS YEAR’S ALPHATAURI WORSE THAN LAST YEAR’S McLAREN?

A slow car isn’t an inherent problem for Ricciardo, but the reason the AlphaTauri is slow has been theorised a potential stumbling block.

It’s not just that they’re both lacking overall downforce; both have limitations on corner entry that severely crimp lap time.

But there are differences in the way the two cars behave in the bends.

Ricciardo’s McLaren cars had weak front ends that required the driver to brake aggressively late to load up the front axle so they could square off the corner and get back on the power early.

It was the opposite of Ricciardo’s career-long driving style, which involved braking earlier and more gently to take a rounder, smoother line over the apex with a higher minimum speed.

This year’s AlphaTauri seems to suffer from the inverted problem of rear instability on the brakes — not necessarily better or any less off-putting, but certainly different.

Mastering different characteristics is what team changes are about, and driver adaptability is important to making success of a swap.

While it’s tempting to highlight Ricciardo’s McLaren troubles as a sign he can’t adapt, his record isn’t quite as dire in that regard as you might think.

His first six months at McLaren were unquestionably difficult as the scale of the challenge of matching his driving style to the car became apparent.

Gap to Norris, first half of 2021

Qualifying difference: 100.377 per cent (approximately 0.339 seconds)

Grid difference: 4.5 places

Points difference: 113-50 to Norris

But the second half of the year was much more promising. The below numbers exclude the wet Belgian and Russian grands prix qualifying results.

Gap to Norris, second half of 2021

Qualifying difference: 100.122 per cent (approximately 0.110 seconds)

Grid place difference: 1.82 places

Points difference: 65-47 to Ricciardo

It wasn’t until 2022 that Ricciardo’s McLaren career really unravelled. Despite the new regulations, the car maintained many of its predecessor’s driving quirks while also building in significant unpredictability from corner to corner.

“When you turn the wheel or do certain things you feel like you should know exactly what’s going to happen,” Lando Norris explained last year. “But that isn’t always the case.

“Sometimes you brake less and the car rotates more or grips more, and other times you brake more and that also does it. It’s very confusing at times.

“At a particular corner you do it one way, at the next corner you have to drive it in a different way.

“You have to change your driving style for every corner.”

For a driver like Ricciardo, who still wasn’t fully at home in the McLaren, it was a killer blow.

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But the odds of this year’s AlphaTauri having the specific combination of shortcomings last year’s McLaren are low. The risk of a devastating repeat is minimal.

“The car will be what it is,” Ricciardo told the F1 website, espousing a fresh approach. “I’m going to drive it and then work from there.

“I don’t want to get too many preconceived ideas. I appreciate the car is going to have its limitations.

“But I’m looking forward to also developing it and using my experience.”

Ricciardo will surely need some adaptation time to, first, brush off the rust of almost eight months on the sidelines and, second, adjust to his new car and its clear shortcomings.

But it’s nothing he shouldn’t be capable of tackling with a bit of time.

“I also don’t expect to get off to a slow start,” he added. “I want to hit the ground running and try and use what I’ve learnt in this time off, put it use.”

If the old Daniel really is back, you can justifiably hope that this 12-race shootout will be all he needs to build some momentum for a frontrunning comeback in 2024.