Introduction
The official 2023 Formula Virtual Season Preview brought to you by Sky Sports FV. “Lights out and away we go!” In a few weeks, we will hear this line again for the first time this year. This also means that we are close to pre-season testing, so no more waiting time to see the new cars for this season. Many of us are curious about who will finish on top, who might struggle throughout the year and which of the newcomers will finish the highest. To give you a quick overview of all teams and drivers, here are our predictions ahead of the new season! 1.Porsche FV Team The 2022 world champions have had many changes in recent months: full factory support from Porsche, a new team name and new faces in the team – both among the drivers and the team boss. Let's talk about the team boss: Sven Schubert, who switched from Phoenix Motorsport before the season. Sven is taking over this season as team boss of the Porsche FV team. He replaces the resigned Robert Mathershaw, who is now working as technical director at the FVA. Much is expected of Schubert, he takes over the world champions and all hopes are on him to continue and remain successful. Already, at Phoenix, he showed that he has the potential to take on a bigger task. We remain curious to see how he develops in his new role. There are also changes among the drivers: Alexander McLaughlin replaces Adrien Simon, who ended his career after 10 seasons at age 38. It remains to be seen how McLaughlin will fare against World Champion Ruiz, but his one-off drive last year and his eVirtual World Championship title were convincing enough to earn a place at Porsche. McLaughlin has the potential, he has already shown that in other series, now he must prove it in FV with a capable car against a strong teammate. Let's talk briefly about our development forecast for Porsche: There was a change for the team in many respects. Nonetheless, we believe the team will continue to perform well and be a contender for the Constructors’ Championship. The driver pairing is strong, but in our opinion not the strongest driver pairing in the field. 2.Downton FV Team 2022 runners-up Downton have brought significantly fewer changes than their title rivals. Same manager, same team, same driver pairing. Only the livery was lightly adapted in honor of the retired Robert Mathershaw to the 2022 Mathershaw livery design. The prerequisites have been laid to make a charge towards another title in 2023. It remains to be seen who will be at the top at the start of the season, but signs are looking good. In our opinion, Downton has the strongest driver pairing this year: title favorite Klaas van Snelheid and 2022 rookie race winner Matteo Zetticci bringing the perfect mix of experience, speed and aggressiveness to the table, to live up to the expectations of team boss Bradley Downton. The performance of the car should be as high as always, saving money from development in the last third of the previous season and no money lost on new drivers. 3.Royal Phoenix Motorsport Phoenix was the surprise of the 2022 season. They scored 214 points and finished third in the Constructors' Championship, an increase of about 690% in points. The team was well coordinated; with Allar Kangur and Will Taylor, Phoenix had a good mix in their driver pairing. In 2023, Kangur had to be parted with in order to promote the wonder talent Ott Eskola from the VWRS. A good move in the right direction and shows that "The Hive" is worth every effort. This year's team leader is Will Taylor, who had a solid debut season despite his relatively high age for a rookie. He showed that he is able to compete in FV, we expect he will show that against Eskola. We expect a lot from Eskola: Ott dominated the VWRS in 2022 and made it look like it would not be a strain for him to drive against the best young talents in the world. Eskola will have to prove to everyone in his rookie year that he can deliver these good performances in FV as well. It will probably be an exciting battle between the two Phoenix drivers. The biggest problem for Phoenix will be building on last year's successes. Even if the successes are justified, Lucas’ withdrawal from the championship played into the team's hands. With the new driver pairing, it will be difficult to say which goals are realistic, but vehicle performance should be strong like last year. 4.Ingram V-Prix Ingram can look back on last season in a similar way as Phoenix: they achieved a significant increase in points from 2021 to 2022 (392% more points) and achieved a race win with James Vasquez in the third race. Regular points scorers Vasquez and Mattson have been teammates at Ingram since 2018, in 2023 that will change however as Mattson is loaned out to SRT for the year. New to the team: Allar Kangur. Kangur was able to prove his driving quality in previous years, and he will show this at Ingram as well. If he can perform the same way as he did last year with Phoenix, we will see a strong Estonian with multiple podium finishes. It will be important for Ingram that the car's performance doesn't deteriorate and that both drivers have a chance of a solid foundation to continue the momentum of 2022. Although the car may have suffered from driver transfers and missing money from that, Ingram's driver pairing is one of the strongest this year and it will be difficult to survive alongside both drivers. With a good car, Ingram could cause some surprises. 5.Ocelot Japan Racing For Ocelot, the signs point to a solid midfield finish. After the collapse in 2019, Ocelot is building on continuity and long-term success. Since 2019, the team has always been able to beat last year's points, but this run could burst in 2023. With Felipe Cesar they have the oldest rookie at 32 years old who was able to achieve good results in eVirtual. His last FV appearance was in 2016 with two test drives for Franklin. We believe that Cesar will have trouble adapting to the new cars. Above all, he will have a very difficult time against team leader Puccio Giodano. Speaking of Giodano: after impressing for Westwood on their return in 2021, Giodano has been the team leader at Ocelot. Last year, teammate Hunter Ryan was dominated throughout the season, Puccio will have it easy against rookie teammate Cesar as well. The car could be a performance upgrade compared to last year, however this year we expect only Giodano to be fighting for points regularly for the team. 6.FIRST Motorsport FIRST has been in free fall since 2020. Each year they hoped for an increase however this was not fulfilled, and the team ended 2022 in 7th in the World Championship. 2023 could also be a major disappointment for the American team, especially since the competitors did not stand still during the winter break and probably will perform better than FIRST. Nothing has changed in the driver pairing either: Felix Perez and Stefan Klien are still in the team, with Perez the better one last year, outscoring his teammate by 21 points. However, both need to make a significant improvement on last year to bring the team back into an upward trend. With Ford as the engine supplier, FIRST have a good partner at their side, but the team has to improve significantly in terms of performance in order to not fall even deeper down the order. However, we are happy to be taught better. 7.Arnello Milner & Ronson Autosport The last few years have been rather poor for AMR: they drove in the lower midfield, and in 2020 they were only able to qualify for 4 races. However, the last 2 seasons show a clear upward trend towards upper midfield and further, this year could even see the first podium for the Australian outfit. During the winter break, AMR Autosport shocked the media when they announced their engine switch to Downton after less than a year at Jaguar. In addition, the biggest surprise came: the 5-time Formula Virtual World Champion Nathaniel Powers will start for AMR alongside Finn Schnyder. A good career development after 2022 for Powers, who had to end the season after 8 races last year because Lucas withdrew from the championship. Not much needs to be said about Nathaniel Powers. He will surely drive the team forwards. Even with the engine change, AMR looks as if they could get in on the top spots this year. They have two good drivers, a title-worthy engine, it all just depends on how the car has developed over the past winter. We expect a lot from AMR Autosport and we have high hopes that they can live up to those expectations. 8.Arrow Mechanics At Arrow, the focus is on long-term development. Since the team's inaugural season in 2020, each season has garnered more points than the previous season. A good development is also the continuity with at least one driver in the team: Takahashi has been an integral part of the team since Arrow joined FV. Since then, he has developed to a team leader. His performances are also significantly better than those of his previous teammates. The Japanese driver now has a new teammate in Daniel Zientek. The 20-year-old Pole comes from the Phoenix Motorsport talent program, known as "The Hive". Unfortunately, in his rookie season with Highwind, he was not be able to achieve the best performance and failed to even qualify for the first 5 races of the season. In his second year he gets another chance in FV, with a better car than last season he can show that he deserves to race in FV. Arrow could make another step in the right direction; we'll have to wait and see how the pre-season tests go. At the moment it looks like a similar result as in 2022. 9.North Star Racing Scottish team North Star have also brought a change for this year. What remains is the beautiful paint job and Brock Kidd in a North Star car. The American has been able to steadily increase his performance since 2021 and clearly defeated Halvosen last year. A lot is expected of Kidd this season, he should lead the team in the direction of the upper midfield in the next few years if they can find a second driver to match his talent. Speaking of the second driver, Hector Draper is a new addition, who has now been promoted from his reserve driver role. Draper was already convincing in the VWRS two years ago, has learned a lot in recent years and is ready to take his chance at North Star. However, it remains to be seen how he fares against Kidd. The New Zealander will need some time to adapt to the performances of his teammate and those of his direct competitors. The car will probably be enough for the midfield again, we will see some results in the points like last year, but they also have strong rivals in the fight for the points. 10.Eni Lamborghini Squadra Corse S.p.A. The Scuderia Meteor under a new name and with factory support from Italy: Lamborghini begin their journey in FV and takes over the Scuderia Meteor outfit. The drivers remain the same, Dutchman Felix Beyer and Italian Enzo Domenicalli are still behind the wheel of the car. New to the team: Luca Gray. The new team boss alongside Shane O'Connell. As a result, Gray will also assume the position of Lamborghini Deputy Team Principal in addition to his position at Gray Autosport. Let's talk about the performances of the past season: last year's performance looks better than it really is; the team was only able to score points thanks to an incredible performance by both drivers in the last race. In the end, this was enough to finish 10th in the championship. Despite the success of the very poor 2022 season, Lamborghini will find it difficult to achieve these goals in 2023. Last year's car was in last place in almost all races, they were only allowed to participate directly in qualifying and skip pre-qualifying due to the withdrawal of Lucas and Franklin. 11.Team Peugeot TotalEnergies Westwood Westwood is also coming with factory support for this year, albeit from France. This is the first time Peugeot has been active as a works team in FV since 2014. The driver pairing has also changed: the team replaced Canadian Barclay with Thierry Xylander. The Belgian has performed well with Highwind in 2022 and Westwood has high hopes for the 23-year-old. Nevertheless, Westwood looks back on a disastrous season. The team didn't take a point for the first time in their history, making them the only team with Lopez not to manage to pick up a point. An upward trend is looming for 2023. The vehicle and the drivers were ready early in the break, so there was plenty of time to concentrate fully on 2023 and the development. With their solid driver pairing and a good car, Westwood could make a big step towards midfield. 12. Lopez FV Team Like Westwood, Lopez could not celebrate a single point gained in 2022, the team ended up in last place among the active teams (Lucas and Franklin excluded). Both Lopez drivers Alvarez and Meyer didn't look good in the car either and only managed a 12th place as their best result of the season. The team will most likely not achieve great success in 2023 either. We can only hope that Lopez shows us a different face in the pre-season test, otherwise 2023 will also be an embarrassment for the Swiss racing team. 13.Toyota Kowhai Racing The first new team for 2023 is Kowhai Racing. The New Zealanders start their first season together with Toyota as engine supplier. After Kowhai competed in the VWRS for three years, the team is now taking the next step. With Marcus Thunder and Hunter Ryan, the team has brought in two solid and already experienced FV drivers, but also drivers who have been heavily criticized in recent years. Especially Ryan had little to say about Giodano last season at Ocelot. Thunder, on the other hand, looks on course to take the title in eVirtual after a few years in FV midfield, but the Brit will still have to prove that he deserves a place in FV. As with all new teams, we can't say much about the development. The pre-qualifying, in which all newcomers are represented, will be important. 14.Bitburger Seifert Racing Team The third German team in FV and the second one to be led by a German, team boss Roy Seifert. The small private team from Germany has already made a lot of headlines. Many local sponsors came to the team, but above all the main sponsor Bitburger. The driver pairing also offers some surprises: the team was able to borrow race winner Jean Mattson from Ingram for the Frenchman’s final year in the series and they were able to sign Swiss racing driver Danilo Forini, who had to end the 2022 season early. Despite the big name, Mattson hasn't had it easy in recent years and has repeatedly had to admit defeat to his teammate Vasquez. At SRT he can now make a fresh start with a young teammate at his side. The team expects a lot from Forini. The Swiss has achieved good results in his 6 races for Franklin in 2022 and it will be interesting to see how he develops over the course of the season. Not much can be said about the development, however, SRT is the only one of the new teams that has invested money for a junior driver. This may have had a negative impact on the development budget. 15. Scuderia Maserati With the last team for 2023 comes the last of the 5 factory teams. The Scuderia Maserati will start in FV in 2023 under the direction of Stefano Gorgoglione. The Italians are of course starting with their "Maserati 801 Nettuno" engine, which has been specially developed for FV. With the Dane Johan Halvosen and the Brit Will Hoskins, the team was able to bring 100% experience into the team. However, both have had their problems in the last year, especially compared to their teammates. Performance and development remains uncertain for Maserati as well, but the additional experience of the drivers could be the key to success. With a solid foundation and solid drivers, Maserati could emerge as the best of the three newcomers from 2023. Outroduction This gives us a brief overview of all teams in the 2023 Formula Virtual Championship. Who do you think will be the secret favorite for the title? Who will be the emerging star? Who will be the disappointment of the year? Who's the surprise of the year? Which of the three newcomer teams will get the first points? Unfortunately, all of these questions will have to wait to be answered, but both the Sky Sport editorial team and everyone in the paddock are excited for the pre-season test. See you at the pre-season test, until then stay tuned and remember: in 3 weeks it’s time to go racing!
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