Reject of the Race - Bahrain 2023

[Londoner]

1. Esteban Ocon. An absolute joke of an afternoon, was he trying to break Maldonado's record for most penalties in one race?

2. McLaren. Slow, dubious reliability, questionable existence, it's 2017 all over again.

Honourable mentions to Ferrari, different year same garbage and Alpine for a clownshow weekend.

[Miguel98]

1. Esteban Ocon - Type of race this site lives to celebrate. Absolutely hilarious

2. McLaren - Pre-season revealed the car wasn't any good but Norris 5 stopping and Piastri having a failed reboot was even worse than expected. Terrible signs from Woking for the year...

[Shadaza]

Ocon's Race

McLaren

[RAK]

1) McLaren: From one of the better contenders last year to an unreliable joke this year. Piastri in particular seems to have been screwed over.

2) Esteban Ocon: What the bathplug was that? Penalty-prone and ridiculous. A clownish performance.

[Hermann95]

Esteban Ocon: that was a race to forget, try again next time and maybe read the rule book in the mean time.

McLaren: slow and apparently unreliable, making big steps backwards atm.

HM: Ferrari. Reliability still an issue, at least their pace is still good (2nd fastest car)

[rachel1990]

1- Estaban Ocon- To those who thought Gasly would get the race ban first at Alpine- Ocon has decided to go a big F*** you and has tried his best to match up with Pierre. Brillant to watch

2- Mclaren- Ouch of a race- slow and unreliable- 2004 vibes here.

HM
Ferrari- new season same old pain
Merc- new season- nowhere near red bull

[IceG]

1 Ocon for comedic value

2 McLaren for tragic value

3 Ferrari reliability losing a barge board in qualy and an engine in the race - same old, same old

[Vassago]

1. Esteban Ocon - going for the time penalty record before parking the car. That was BAD.

2. McLaren - off the pace (like in Bahrain last season) and unreliable. Woof.

3. Haas - off the pace and anonymous (the highlight was Hulkenberg losing bodywork on lap one). If they can't score big points before the development race heats up this will be a very long season for them.

HM: Ferrari - well, they didn't even wait until Round 4 to start dropping the ball this season.

[Gertrand Bachot]

Ocon - you're shite mate.

[Meatwad]

Esteban Ocon: 20 seconds' worth of time penalties is all that needs to be said.

Dishonorable mention to McLaren for barely getting one car to the finish in last place. Piastri and Norris deserve better!

[James1978]

Ocon's penalties galore is the stuff RotR comedy gold is made for

DHMs to McLaren (though Lando did show some decent pace in between topping up for air), Ferrari reliability again and the chasing pack bar Aston Martin (they get a free as they've made a big stride forward) but mostly Ferrari and Mercedes for giving Red Bull an easy ride as last year. I just pray RB aren't this dominant every race because Checo won't challenge Max like say Senna/Prost or Hamilton/Rosberg when they had dominant cars. It'll be another Webber or Rubens.

[Enforcer]

Has to be Ocon and his penalty stacking antics.

[FullMetalJack]

Ocon
McLaren

Easy

[Wallio]

Ocon - How? Just how? This type of thing is what this site was built for. And if you were going to retire anyway, why take every penalty first?

Hulkenberg - New year, New team, still terrible. Mick died for this.

[noiceinmydrink]

Races like the one Ocon had is the reason this site exists. Stuff of legends that we will talk about for years to come before we're swallowed by the Large Hadron Collider.

Thank you Esteban, you truly took one for the team today.

[went]

McLaren were dreadful, and the fact that Williams and Alfa Romeo have already scored (on the leader's lap!) while their best car was lapped twice kind of says it all.

But let's be honest, stringing a starting grid error into three separate penalties after failing to serve it correctly twice makes Ocon the runaway winner. No contest. It takes talent and teamwork.

[Spectoremg]

1. Ocon - you're a star.
2. Haas - another season of making up the numbers. Hulkenberg - that's how ambitious they are.

[Batty]

Slam dunk Ocon. I mean yeah you could nominate McLaren but like it's slam dunk Ocon

[Aerond]

Ocon - Absolutely hilarious

HM

State of McLaren
Ferrari's lel rel

[James1978]

I'm DHM'ing Russell for saying post-race that Red Bull will win every race this year. What a defeatist attitude!

I've been following 1998 closely on YouTube (the channel that posts the races has them taken down almost immediately every time but Belgium was posted yesterday and I enjoyed it tons more than Bahrain 2023!) - and you didn't hear Schumacher say anything like that after McLaren LAPPED the whole field in the first race. Instead Ferrari caught up with sheer hard work. George might want to take inspiration from his reserve driver's father!!

[mario]

1. Esteban Ocon. An absolute joke of an afternoon, was he trying to break Maldonado's record for most penalties in one race?

2. McLaren. Slow, dubious reliability, questionable existence, it's 2017 all over again.

Honourable mentions to Ferrari, different year same garbage and Alpine for a clownshow weekend.

It really is a bit of a tough one - on the one hand, you have the string of penalties that Ocon managed to rack up in the race, but on the other hand, the fact that, until Ocon withdrew his car, Norris was still running behind Ocon despite the numerous time penalties speaks volumes of quite how badly McLaren's weekend went. Those moments also do kind of mask the strange breakdown that Piastri had as well which, as you note, is possibly a bit of a worrying sign.

I'm DHM'ing Russell for saying post-race that Red Bull will win every race this year. What a defeatist attitude!

I've been following 1998 closely on YouTube (the channel that posts the races has them taken down almost immediately every time but Belgium was posted yesterday and I enjoyed it tons more than Bahrain 2023!) - and you didn't hear Schumacher say anything like that after McLaren LAPPED the whole field in the first race. Instead Ferrari caught up with sheer hard work. George might want to take inspiration from his reserve driver's father!!

On the other hand, the 1998 season didn't have financial regulations that restricted development, nor the aerodynamic testing restrictions, nor did they have the stricter homologation rules that mean that probably at least half of the major upgrade packages that the F300 received during the 1998 season to make it into a more competitive car would not be allowed today. Would Ferrari have been able to catch up to McLaren in that era if they had to operate to the financial and technical restrictions that exist today?

[Har1MAS1415]

McLaren, enough said.

[Rob Dylan]

Esteban Ocon: did a Fisichella-Malaysia move, then did his five-second penalty in about 3 seconds, then sped in the pitlane when he was told to come back, so did about 745 seconds worth of penalty time by the end of it. Sometime during the race he even had the gall to say "never in my many years of racing have I ever...". A perfect storm of a trash Sunday.

Haas: Hulkenberg's big epic comeback lasted one Saturday, as he dropped down the pack to sit in the basement alongside Magnussen from about lap 3 to the end. They basically disappeared from existence for the final 90 minutes of the race and we never saw them again.

McLaren: contrary to Haas, they drew as much attention as they could with five-minute pitstops and endless failures. It would be funny if they didn't have an S-tier driver and one of the highest touted rookies on the grid sitting around in last and second-last.

[Alextrax52]

Ocon: Clear winner here for reasons everybody else has said. A race to file nicely into the “worst stinkers” of individual performance category

McLaren: We kind of expected it but my word they were gash in a very 2017-18 style way. With the Indycar team continuing to thrive I wonder why they even bother with F1.

DHM: Ferrari: New season, same old Scuderia

DHM: George Russell: Not just the aforementioned defeatist attitude but he also went from claiming to be faster than Hamilton to finishing behind an 80% fit Stroll on Merit

DHM: Haas: Anonymous bar Hulk’s Q3 appearance

[Bleu]

Some of the Ocon issues were due to the team so I'll put him to 2nd place in my reject ranking of the weekend. McLaren for the 1st place.

[Rob Dylan]

There are only two real options, if we're being totally honest! You have 48 hours to decide the first Reject of the Race in the year 2023. Get voting!

[FalconCapelli]

Mclaren's fumble is a definite ROTR,however as the biggest ocon fan in here (and the world!) his race is far from nice, he did have a terrible race in there...

[Londoner]

One driver woke up in Bahrain and decided he wanted ROTR all to himself!