The full trailer shows more swearing — plus Steiner fishing — and it would be of no surprise to see increasingly tense phone calls with team owner Gene Haas over the course of another difficult year for a team which has gradually morphed into a slightly more chic version of Minardi i.e. a quite slow F1 car made from the Italian motor sport odd bits bin.
What did for Steiner was a Haas which has refused to shake off its defining characteristic, being an F1 beast which loves nothing more than to munch on its own Pirellis, be they rare, medium or well done.
This meant that several times Haas would go from being Q3 heroes to grand prix zeroes in just the space of a few laps, leaving it last in the constructors’ race. Will the writing be on Steiner’s motorhome wall in S6?
Perez pressure
Sergio Perez has become the new Valtteri Bottas. A driver hugely demoralised after being utterly destroyed on track by his world champion colleague again and again, left to his own existential crisis while the rest of the team basks in the green Heineken-branded light of glory.
It was rumoured for much of this season that F1’s biggest grin Daniel Ricciardo might be about to beam his way back into Red Bull’s non-Verstappen seat for 2024, which Perez was forced to refute several times. Not only would he regularly lose out to his team-mate, but he also failed to make Q3 on more than a few occasions, with the pressure clearly getting to him.
Will we see Sergio mulling his fate over a brand of Checo-endorsed tequila? He doesn’t feature in the trailer, but we do see Daniel Ricciardo lowering himself into a Red Bull at a test. It’s inconceivable the series would turn its back on this soap opera storyline.
Christian Horner
There’ll be lots of him, don’t worry.
Yet another Alpine implosion
Poor Otmar Szafnauer: the man who has become fodder for a championship which seems to now see itself as LinkedIn on wheels (and is only slightly less insufferable), has been shot out of an F1-branded cannon yet again.