I’ll be honest. It took a lot for me to watch the final race of 2021. I did not watch it live and I was unable to escape reading the story of what had happened. It was therefore months later that I watched that fateful race and how Max Verstappen grabbed his first world championship. I say first, he will win more. That is both undeniable and well deserved, assuming he continues to have equipment under him that can live with his talent. My problem is that Michael Masi gifted him the championship by a series of events that both devastated Masi’s reputation, destroyed the already-shaky integrity of Formula 1 itself and robbed Lewis Hamilton of a history-making eighth world title. That is not me talking with sour grapes since I’m British. Lewis had the weight of the world on his shoulders going into that last race and the composure, the skill, the ability that he showed to utterly dominate it right to the end make what happened on the last lap sickening. When I finally watched the race, I was furious. To be honest, I had no idea if I would continue watching the sport. But hey, this is me. F1 has been one of my passions since I was two years old and my parents bought me a die-cast Mclaren F1 car as driven by Emerson Fittipaldi. So let’s fast-forward to 2022.
This season has brought changes. MANY changes. The aerodynamics of the cars have been refactored to focus on ground effect, the ability to suck the car to the track, and to disperse the hot and active air from the car up and away from the rear, meaning that one car following another is not so disrupted by the wake from the car in front. Both of these have, thus far, shown great promise. It has also arrived with winners and losers. Ferrari have been tremendous, Red Bull have a very strong car. Mercedes have been battered and are very much on the ropes.
Charles Leclerc has taken a visible step-up this year. His control, his racecraft, his intelligence and his sheer ability are now on another level. Carlos Sainz has already been left in his shadow. Max also started very strongly but, whilst the Red Bull appears fantastic from an aero perspective, the car is reminiscent of the fragility of Red Bull cars from eight or so years ago. Fernando Alonso looks like a driver who has discovered the elixir of youth. He easily has the measure of his team-mate, Ocon, and is placing his Alpine further up the track than it has any justified hope of being. Then we come to Lewis Hamilton and George Russell. Both are pushing each other hard. The young pretender does not appear in any way intimidated by the 7-time champion and is hustling his team leader every inch of the way. But their car is a disaster. Several cars experience bouncing on the straights as the ground effect stalls forcing the car up, at which point the ground effect takes hold again and pulls the car down. I have no idea how the drivers cope with this since it is so violent. Red Bull appear to have eliminated it but they also have Adrian Newey so it’s not that surprising. Both Ferrari and Mercedes have massive issues. However, whilst Ferrari experience the bouncing, known as “porpoising” just as badly on the straights, the elimination of it in the braking areas leading to a corner mean they are still able to control and push through the corners. Mercedes, time and again are utterly compromised in the corners. The fact that their engine is now maybe only the third most powerful on the grid leaves them hopelessly off the pace.
It was only Red Bulls lack of reliability that gave Hamilton early hope in Bahrain with a frankly unbelievable podium as a result. However, a 10th place finish in Saudi Arabia, with Max winning that race and a more realistic 6th in Australia shows that Mercedes may be the best of the rest, but they have a huge gulf between themselves and the combination of Ferrari and Red Bull to overcome.
That said, this is a VERY long season of 23 races. Since we’ve had three so far, that’s almost a season to go. However, Charles seems light years ahead of Sainz at this point whilst both Perez/Verstappen and Hamilton/Russell appear very close in the intra-team battles. This is allowing Charles to develop a very healthy lead in the championship. I’m delighted to see it. I have said for many years that Leclerc is a true champion. Whether others can close down his lead will be a question for the teams. Red Bull need to get on top of their cars reliability. Mercedes need to get on top of their cars aero issues. Both need to fix their cars quickly. Carlos Sainz is the net loser here. He simply needs to find a new gear to his own ability and find a way to catch back up to Charles. Otherwise he will just find himself as yet another case of a Ferrari number 2 driver.
