After all the dust has settled and everyone has finished ordering their Ferrari 2022 World Champion flags, that you can conveniently get in red, white and green, we now have a slightly clearer picture of the field for this year’s Formula One season. Lap times are in and engines have exploded and there were quite a few surprises out there that is going to make this season much more exciting to watch up and down the field. With the new regulations finally in place in order to get cars to race closer to each other and more over takes, we shouldn’t see the same DRS trains for 2 hours. And with the lower teams from the previous season allowed more development time to also get the field closer we are seeing which teams made good use of the time and which ones needed more.
The biggest winners this weekend was obviously Ferrari with Leclerc claiming the first pole position and checkered flag of the season relatively unmatched. If you’re reading this blog, I’m sure you’ve read about them 100 times today already so I’ll save you the time.
But how about Haas!!! The punchline of the paddock in years past, and having to just break ties with their biggest sponsor and a very talented young driver (ha), Gunther calls up his old buddy Kevin Magnussen and all he does is finish P5 a week after finding out he wouldn’t be driving an Indy Car this weekend. That in itself is insane to pull off but this was not a fluke. Mick Schumacher finished P11 and was spun around by Ocon on the first lap that saw him receive a 5 second penalty. Expect for both Haas drivers to be competing for points race in and race out and hopefully we get some great Gunther soundbites throughout the year.
Another team at the bottom of the barrel last season, and not expected to do much this year after a dismal testing, was Alfa Romeo. Off the bat Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou impressed during qualifying with the first ever Chinese Formula One driver making it into Q2 and veteran to the game but new to the team Bottas in an impressive P6. Bottas had a less than ideal start after spinning his tires and falling out of the top 10 but battled back to finish P6. And not only did both Alfa’s finish the race but both drivers took advantage of that fiery Ferrari engine and finished with points with the rookie Zhou finishing P10 in his debut race.
It’s hard to call Mercedes winners after seeing them dominate for so many years and Hamilton and Russell only taking P3 and P4 in Sakhir but the fact remains that they weren’t supposed to even be there. Thaw W13 engine isn’t going to be slow for long and with the issues we saw with Red Bull those could be some very valuable points come the end of the season.
And speaking of Red Bull’s issues, worst case scenario for reigning champion Max Verstappen and Sergio Perez. After a fun back and forth with Leclerc after the first round of pit stops Verstappen settled into 2nd place and was poised to make his attack when one by one the Red Bull engine powered cars started to drop like flies. First, Gasley caught on fire, then Max freaked out on his radio again before his engine crapped out, and a lap later we saw Checo spin out on turn 4 after his died. Even though technically these are still Honda engines they have the Red Bull label on them for the first time ever and I can’t wait to hear the excuses that follow from Christian Horner. You know he can swing this in a way that Mercedes gets investigated. Yuki Tsunoda was the only Red Bull driver to finish with points which is good to see because Yuki is the best. Favorite character on Drive to Survive by a mile.
Another team with high expectations coming into this year was Aston Martin and their weekend could not have got much worse. First Vettel tested positive for Covid and they had to call Hulkenberg from the bullpen who did a good job under the circumstances. Stroll finished P12 with Hulkenberg finishing P17 right in front of the 3 DNF’s. For a team with a lot of ambition and a team owner looking to drop the hammer on someone any chance he can, having both cars finish the race can’t be the biggest takeaway from the weekend.
And everyone’s favorite one-two punch of Danny Ric and Lando got to get a good look of everyone’s new shiny rear wings all race as they were by far the biggest disappointment of the weekend. After showing promise in Barcelona, Ricciardo also tested positive for Covid and missed all of testing and never got his footing over the weekend where he returned. He couldn’t make it out of Q1 with the inferior Mercedes engine with Lando barely making it to Q2. They were the only team to start on medium tires which they soon realized why as both cars got passed off the start and neither team came close to the points, even with 3 cars ahead of them dropping out, with Danny Ric in P14 and Norris in P15. Again, I fully expect the W13 to improve and McLaren should figure out a solution to the front axle problems they were having on testing, but of this continues Norris will be kicking himself for that unnecessary extension he signed with better options possibly available.