Appearing on the main stage at the Autosport International Show in Birmingham, Sky F1 commentator David Croft engaged the crowd for a season review of 2023 and a general chat about the current state of play in F1.
Casting his eye over how he reckons 2024 will go, he spoke of his hopes that Mercedes and Lewis Hamilton will be able to bring the fight to Max Verstappen and Red Bull, and also let slip he’d heard from one driver that he has concerns over his team’s pace.
Summing up how he’s feeling heading into the 2024 F1 season, Croft detailed his thoughts on where he reckons some of the teams might end up. “So my real hope for this year is that we actually get a Mercedes car that is a bit more on par with the Red Bull,” he told a cheering crowd at ASI24.
“I don’t know how it’s all going behind the scenes, you know, a wheel has not even turned yet at this point. “[But] Esteban Ocon said he believes the Alpine is a little bit slow, he told me that before Christmas, but I don’t know who’s in really good shape.”
Explaining who he thinks will be strong, Croft said he has no reason to doubt Red Bull at this point. “I do think going into this year, Red Bull is obviously going to be in decent shape because they’ve just finessed what was superb last year,” he said.
“But then you’ve got Ferrari who says their car is going to be 95 percent different to last year. So heaven only knows what we’re gonna get from Ferrari on that one. “You’ve got Aston Martin who needs to put right what went wrong in the back end of last year or the middle part of last year and get back to where they were at the start.
“Then you’ve got McLaren. McLaren are fantastic – their revival last year was like Lazarus. “They were at the bottom of the Championship after three races and, by the end of it, Lando and Oscar were the closest things to Max – which was mega.”
