Formula One - 2022 Season Preview

 

Alfa Romeo-Ferrari: Zhou Guanyu (24), Valtteri Bottas (77)

Alfa Romeo are in their fourth season in Formula 1 after taking over the old Sauber team brand in 2019. But the Italian-Swiss team never regained their position since then and they have struggled during the 2021 season, only finishing ninth in the constructors' championship.

It’s all change with a new driver line-up for Alfa in 2022 after Kimi Raikkonen's retirement from Formula 1 and the departure of Antonio Giovinazzi.

Valtteri Bottas, a 10-time race winner with Mercedes, makes the switch from Mercedes AMG, while Guanyu Zhou becomes Formula 1's first Chinese driver after making the step up from Formula 2.

This year will prove a big challenge for Alfa Romeo having only picked up a few points (13) last season and they only finished ahead of the USA Haas team (0 points).

They remain ranked 9^th of the current ten teams on the F1 grid.

But like their closest rivals, they spent much of last year focussing on the new regulations and design of the 2022 car forgoing much development and upgrades of the 2021 season C41 chassis.

Bottas brings experience to the team after his departure from Mercedes AMG and with promising new Chinese rookie driver Guanyu Zhou, much will rest on the Finn’s shoulders to at least deliver some points.

Overall, if the new car is at least competitive with the lower runners, a more realistic target may be to consolidate their position or at least contest race finish positions from 7^th to 10^th. The team will improve their ranking so long as some 2021 reliability and errors can be ironed out.

But I’m not expecting a great deal more and testing in Barcelona and Bahrain hasn’t shown any dramatic improvements. This year could prove critical as to Alfa Romeo’s longer term commitment to F1.

Alpha Tauri-Honda: Pierre Gasly (10), Yuki Tsunoda (22)

The 2021 season saw Alpha Tauri in a midfield battle with Alpine and Aston Martin and they eventually finished the campaign between them in sixth place.

Pierre Gasly was strong and most of all consistent in 2021. He secured his only podium for the season in Baku after a frantic tussle with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc for third place in that race.

Gasly is again partnered by Japanese driver Yuki Tsunoda, who just missed out on a podium place at the final race of the season in Abu Dhabi when he finished fourth. Tsunoda, while showing great promise early in the season, it proved to be strung with driver errors and a steep learning curve. There was a point the team even considered dropping him.

With new regulations and more limited budget caps, the team will be keen to return to winning ways; a single victory in 2020 with Gasly.

Overall, it is critical that the team don’t start going backwards in progress, and with Aston Martin and Williams as likely close rivals, the step up to compete with a team like McLaren still looks a big ask.

However, testing in Spain and Bahrain ahead of the season opener has shown some promising indicators. Like 2021 pre-season testing, Gasly and Tsunoda have looked astonishing quick, with the former topping the timesheets on the first day of Bahrain testing in mid-March.

But once again, that has to be better transferred to race pace and consistency from both drivers, not just one driver in every race. This will be a big year for both drivers, but in particular Tsunoda and his continuation in F1 for 2023 and beyond with Alpha Tauri or some other team.

 

Alpine-Renault: Fernando Alonso (14), Esteban Ocon (31)

In 2021, Alpine once again finished in the top five teams.

Esteban Ocon won a chaotic Hungarian Grand Prix to secure his maiden victory in F1.

Fernando Alonso, who returned to the sport last year and is now the oldest driver on the grid at the age of 40, claimed his first podium since 2014 with a third-place finish in Qatar.

Much like Alpha Tauri, Alpine will be committed to taking their single victory in the past two seasons to the next level. Again, sheer pace was a limiting factor and one does wonder about the power unit development. This seems to have been the Achilles heel in 2021.

Car reliability was also a problem early on but in the latter part of 2021, it was mastered. Yet, the team returns erratic performances dependant on the track they race on. This has to be addressed and it is likely down to a weaker power unit than Mercedes, Honda and Ferrari.

Alpine, as a team, is something of an enigma from race to race. You never know what you are going to get – a potential team that could vie for a championship in a couple of years or one that will be backing up the grid by then.

This could well be the year when both Alonso and Ocon decide if the long-haul and development, together with potential and more race wins is worth it.

Overall, and while pre-season testing can be very unreliable as a guide, they looked fast, but I can’t help feeling that I’m not seeing enough forward momentum. It should not be ignored that long-time Renault stalwart Alain Prost departed his post at the end of last season. Maybe he knows which way the wind is blowing for Alpine.

I’ve seen enough to suggest that Alpine are certainly not going to be quite challenging McLaren or Ferrari in 2022, let alone Red Bull or Mercedes.

Incidentally, Alpine main BWT sponsor was on display in Bahrain testing, and it looks like the 2022 livery has switched from blue to the new ‘pink panthers’ at least for the first two races of the season.

 

Aston Martin-Mercedes: Sebastian Vettel (5), Lance Stroll (18)

Aston Martin ended the 2021 season seventh in the constructors' standings.

It was a mixed and chaotic season for Sebastian Vettel as he began his post-Ferrari career with the team. There is no doubt the highlight for the four-time world champion was his second place at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

Vettel will be partnered again by Canadian driver Lance Stroll. He finished last season one place lower in the drivers' championship in 13th.

Aston Martin quietly worked away on their 2022 car design and limited their 2021 car developments. Despite that, on some circuits, the car showed great promised and enough consistency to elevate them to 7^th in the constructors’ championship. But for some minor errors by their drivers, a car that was deemed underweight due to a fuel regulation, you sense the team is moving in the right direction.

If they have got their time invested in the 2022 car right, a win may just be possible this year. Unlike Alpine, there seems a firmer commitment by Aston Martin to F1. There was some talk of the team examining the possibility of producing their own power units in the next two years, or perhaps pairing with a manufacturer like VW or Porsche.

Overall, Aston Martin look like a team moving forward with a solid and experienced driver line-up. Their 2022 car turned a lot of eyes and they were one of the first teams to nail their design to the mast for the coming season having worked on it for a full year.

I’d be very surprised if Aston Martin finish as low as 7^th this year in the constructors’ championship. Expect a few surprises from this team in 2022. They could well be hot on the heels of McLaren and Ferrari, proving to be anything but also-rans in Bahrain testing.

Ferrari - Charles Leclerc (16), Carlos Sainz (55)

Ferrari were back among the top three teams in 2021 after a disastrous 2020 season. They achieved no race wins throughout the year. That’s not the Scuderia way.

Charles Leclerc begins his fourth season with Ferrari, but despite securing two pole positions in 2021, the 24-year-old has not won a grand prix since 2019. He will be keen to change that in 2022.

Leclerc's Spanish team-mate Carlos Sainz is preparing for his second season as a Ferrari driver and achieved four podium finishes for the Italian team in 2021.

Outside of Verstappen, few will argue that Ferrari have probably the two youngest and most talented drivers on the grid in Leclerc and Sainz. Given the right car, both could dominate F1 for the next decade with multiple championships.

When Ferrari revealed their F1-75 car in February, it was greeted with gasps. It’s a radical design and will be one of the most distinctive cars on the grid in 2022. The question remains: have they got it right or is this another 2020 dud? Along with McLaren, Ferrari looked impressive in Barcelona and Bahrain testing. But we saw the same story in 2020 and look how that turned out.

The team maintain they have put a great deal of equal emphasis on the new chassis and power unit. Power was the main weakness on many circuits last season. The 2021 car seemed to ‘come alive’ in races in fits and starts and there are no arguments the team itself made crucial strategical pit errors which seriously hampered their drivers.

Despite a single win in 2021, the team finished 3^rd in the constructors’ championship behind Mercedes and Red Bull, and ahead of closest rivals McLaren.

Overall, Ferrari have thrown the dice for 2022. If, as I suspect, no one dominate team emerges, the Scuderia will be in the mix for race wins and championships.

 

Haas-Ferrari: Kevin Magnussen (20), Mick Schumacher (47)

The 2021 season was a struggle for Haas as the American team finished bottom of the pile with the slowest car and not a single point.

Their focus all along was the 2021 car development. Improvements are expected. If not, it is hard to see where this is going.

The start of 2022 wasn’t much better. The team has, however, faced serious disruption after bringing in Kevin Magnussen as a driver after opting to sack Nikita Mazepin as a result of Russia's invasion of Ukraine.

Mick Schumacher will no longer be a rookie and the 22-year-old made it out of the first qualifying session on just two occasions last year. He did qualify in 14^th place for the Turkish Grand Prix.

In truth, Mazepin proved way out of his depth in F1, and in a poor car it was always hard to judge Schumacher’s progress. The experienced Dane Kevin Magnussen will bring a very different measure and dimension in 2022.

Overall, as for the team, driver experience and pace from the Dane will help and you feel that it can only get better for Haas. Like Williams and McLaren in recent years when they too backed up the grid; points, just a few, will be critical.

With its main sponsor annexed, funding will mostly have to come from owner Gene Haas. This could be another long season for the team and the 2022 car looked – well, underwhelming and more generic to what was expected from the new F1 regulations. But, hey, maybe simplicity will be the key to slow progress this year. And if that new Ferrari power unit is as good as expected, it may help elevate the team.

But I sense a long road ahead. F1 and Liberty Media is keen to ensure that the sport has a USA team involved with the expansion of American races. As yet, Gene Haas will know that the team has fallen well short of those expectations and the promise shown in its first couple of years.   

McLaren-Mercedes: Daniel Ricciardo (3), Lando Norris (4)

McLaren were locked in a battle for third in the constructors' championship with Ferrari during the 2021 season, but it was Ferrari who cemented a top-three finish at the final race in Abu Dhabi in December.

Daniel Ricciardo won the Italian Grand Prix after struggling early on in the season to find his feet at McLaren. Teammate Norris made it a podium one-two at Monza and like a pub quiz question; it is easily forgotten that this proved to be the only manufacturer one-two during the entire 2021 season. Not even Mercedes and Red Bull achieved that.

Again, easily forgotten, the team also secured a pole position in Russia. But for rain and changing conditions, a switch of tyres, Norris looked certain to secure his maiden F1 win in 2021.

McLaren have come a long way since Fernando Alonso departed a team that propped up the rear of the grid. Point-for-point, race-for-race; McLaren are probably the most improved team over the past two to three years.

You sense, just like Ferrari, the McLaren organisation are on the cusp of breaking the Mercedes/Red Bull domination and return as a serious race-winning contender.

Overall, I predict we will see some of those wins this year. Whether it will be quite enough for a championship win is another question.

 

 

Mercedes - Lewis Hamilton (44), George Russell (63)

Mercedes were pushed all the way by rivals Red Bull but they did clinch an eighth straight constructors' title in Abu Dhabi.

George Russell comes in from Williams for 2022. He had a brief spell as a Mercedes driver when he replaced Lewis Hamilton at the Sakhir Grand Prix in 2020. There was never much doubt last season that Russell was in-bound and Bottas out-bound.

In controversial circumstances, Hamilton missed out on an eighth drivers' championship to Max Verstappen on the final lap of the season-ender in Abu Dhabi last year.

It has led to a serious overhaul of FIA race director regulations and unlike off-season F1 in previous years, the arguments and debate has rumbled on. It’s got far too partisan and tiring from both team managers and F1 fans.

Much of that controversy has seen Mercedes highly guarded about their new 2022 car. The final iteration was only fully tested in Bahrain and shows quite radical design features, very different to the car tested two weeks earlier in Barcelona.

The new 2022 W13 car has already been dubbed the ‘car with no side-pods’ with its ‘spaceship mounted mirrors’, and ‘is it regulation legal?’ The FIA seem to thing so.

Belt yourselves in for 2022. The season may start off pretty much as 2021 ended.

Overall, Mercedes will be right there in contention for both driver and constructor titles.

Aside from design and technicalities, the biggest question at Mercedes is going to be how much new arrival George Russell will push Hamilton, and the ultimate question: how much was Bottas underperforming last year?

 

Red Bull-Honda: Max Verstappen (1), Sergio Perez (11)

It’s all the ones at Red Bull this year after Verstappen won the 2021 drivers’ title. Red Bull will aim to add the constructors’ title this season.

For the team, the question throughout last year was always: are we entering a new era of driver and constructor domination? Clearly the FIA and F1 have other ideas.

Max Verstappen won 10 races and secured 10
pole positions during a tight title fight last year but the fallout from Abu Dhabi still remains. It is a year the Dutchman will still need to prove he can be equally and more dominant for his second driver title.

Sergio Perez remains in the team. But you sense this is going to be a make or break year for the Mexican to hold that position. Perez finished the season strongly but it was almost always in a supporting role to Verstappen, much as it was for Bottas at Mercedes. He finished fourth in the drivers' standings in 2021.

Much more will be expected by Red Bull this year. It still took Perez far longer than expected to record his first win for the team. It came by the race woes of his Verstappen and Hamilton. Too often, Perez has been missing in action at races.

At the start of this season, Red Bull, like Mercedes, are looking for two title driver contenders, but from their own team. I don’t see that in Perez. I do see it in Russell.

And like Mercedes, Red Bull have played some shenanigans with their new car reveal and testing. I don’t know how this is going to hurt both teams with testing new designs and upgrades so late in the day.

Overall, I don’t think this is going to be an easy season for Red Bull. I can’t help feeling the racing will be a lot closer and Red Bull will spend more time looking in the rear-view mirror than looking forward and striving on from their driver 2021 title. It’s a process Mercedes AMG have learnt better over the years. The ambition of how to stay ahead transferred to actually doing it. And for Red Bull – it’s far from a learnt habit, yet.

Williams-Mercedes: Nicholas Latifi (6), Alex Albon (23)

The 2021 season saw Williams finish eighth in the constructors' championship, but with new owners it finished on a tone of progress and stability. Unlike the doldrums of the previous two years, races were completed and points picked up.

Nicholas Latifi achieved his best placing in Formula 1 at the Hungarian Grand Prix when the Canadian converted 18th on the grid to a seventh-place finish.

With George Russell departing, Alex Albon returns to F1 after a year out. Driver experience is what the team needs. That’s where the fall-down might occur this year.

The new car is not unlike the W13 Mercedes with limited side-pods and tight, shrink-wrapped construction around the rear engine. No one knows if this configuration is going to work in an F1 race, but Williams Engineering were the first to debut it way back at the start of February. Again, it’s radical. It’s different.

Overall, the team need to step up now in 2022 and show that they can compete seriously with the mid-grid teams like Alpine and Aston Martin.

Russell showed he could wrestle everything out of last year’s car. I’m unconvinced Latifi and Albon have that ability. Williams may prove to have produced a great 2022 car, but I don’t think they have a driver to deliver that now and push on in the way Russell demonstrated throughout last season.

 

 

FORMULA ONE – 2022 SEASON PREVIEW

Predictions? Forget it. You can’t handle predictions! And you are asking all the wrong questions when it comes to F1 in 2022.

Try these questions:

Do bits of you bounce when you go fast in a straight line?

Do my sidepods look big in this new designer number?

How’s the wind blowing through your venturi tunnels?

Do you still feel cool when your engine is hot and racy?

Tight-fitting or a little curvy on the rear?

Do your flaps still work and open as well as they did last year?

When I’m behind you, will I be able to hold you closer and you won’t get annoyed?

 

No. You haven’t stepped into the world of an adult movie set. But these are the questions every F1 team, driver and fan will be asking and wanting answers to in one week’s time when the F1 circus comes to Bahrain town.

There will be clowns and pretenders – those who believe they already have the answers to the above questions.

In truth… no one has the answers.

In 2020, the world governing body of motorsport and F1 decided to rewrite the F1 technical regulation rulebook. A virus threw the world into disarray and the program for change was delayed until now. The future: a fairy-tale world where F1 would be more exciting and entertaining, drivers and their cars could pass each other if they were quicker, and in general the spectacle of an F1 race weekend would be less predictable.

Fairy-tale or reality? I’ve been following F1 since the late 1970s. It’s funny. I’ve been listening to the same songbook since then. The same reinvention to address concerns and domination of teams and drivers for decades.

But here we are again. Something of a revisit to the 1980s and the era of what is known in F1 as ‘ground effect’. No snickering at the back and references to adult films, but we are back to how the wind blows and what was then known as ‘skirts’ on F1 cars.

The principle – how do you get an F1 car to stick to the ground at phenomenal speed in corners as well as straights. Heated sticky slick tyres in dry conditions can only do so much. There are two ways. Airflow directed over surfaces to push a car down to the road. You need serious wing surfaces to do that. Think of it like an aircraft, but upside-down. Instead of lift, you want pushing downflow. But it is a complex compromise of speed versus grip. The other way is changing airflow to direct and ‘suck’ the car down to the road through heat and pressure, but it has to be directed in a very specific way.

That’s what F1 designers have spent the past year figuring out – suck instead of push and how best to direct airflow from below rather than above. Most modern F1 designers were kids during the 1980s. An F1 car with airflow concentrated on above wing surfaces to push it down creates significant ‘wake’ disturbances behind it – much like an aircraft at altitude. F1 has been dogged for years with that wake effect, where slipstream sucks a car in to pass, but get too close, and the air disturbance on your own car is disrupted and grip is impacted in corners.

In essence, a faster car could spend many laps trying to overtake a slower car because every time it closes in, it loses grip and the driver falls back from the air disturbance. A sort of yo-yo effect. It also creates tyre overheating and wear. If a driver can’t get close enough on a straight to pass, they may be doomed to spend many laps behind a train of slower cars, hoping for a mistake or a braking lunge into a corner.

It's the reason we have so many controversial incidents in races and steward investigations. Drivers get frustrated and their teams end up using pitstop strategy to overcome difficult track positions rather than driver ability.

After a closely contested 2021 championship, no one wants to see a season decided by a steward or race director or how one single person on their shoulders interprets the rules. Nor should race team managers be allowed to dictate or influence how a race director interpret those rules.

It remains to be seen how the FIA will apply its revisions and restructure in the 2022 season. But we all need to get away from partisan demonising of drivers and an ever-increasing and disturbing fanbase of boys and girls trapped in a world of patriotism and nationalism. There is no place for that in F1 – and we have seen enough of state-funded media in certain quarters driving that nationalism with petrol can and match in hand for their adoring public.

If you love your team or driver and are a fan, continue to love it. But don’t dare turn that love into hatred of everything and everyone else. I also love the sport and entertainment of F1. I don’t want a minority of idiots who profess to be fans of a sport turn it into the shocking spectacle that club football turned into during the 1980s and 1990s. So far, it has been contained to social media. Let’s end it there and not support media who want to fuel it.

Back to F1 itself and 2022.

I draw no conclusions from the testing in Barcelona two weeks ago. Bahrain is a better measure but still with a lot of qualifications over the three days. The difference is that the opening race of the season is only one week away.

It’s clear both Mercedes and Red Bull have been sandbagging. I’ve always argued how much that really helps teams under new technical regulations. The old adage – the opposition won’t know where we are exactly. That’s great. But guess what? You as a team also won’t quite know exactly where you are either.

In February, Red Bull presided over a car unveiling that was simply a generic iteration. The same month Mercedes also unveiled their car. They brought it to Barcelona and tested it. It wasn’t the most accomplished test. This weekend, they turn up with another redesigned ‘no side-pod’ car and try testing this one. Red Bull also turned up but with more limited upgrades.

Here’s the rub. Compared to Aston Martin, Ferrari, Williams and McLaren, I’m not convinced either Red Bull or Mercedes know where they are going. The 2021 championship clearly consumed much of their resources and with team budget caps and development restrictions, this guarded game may come back to haunt both teams.

Next week, some teams will start the first race weekend knowing where they are, what needs improving, and areas of design concern. Until we see qualifying and the race, no team will know how well they got their 2022 car right – whether they designed and tested a tank or bathtub or a sophisticated machine that can deliver a few race wins or even a championship.

But F1 is a technical sport, a great driver can compensate for deficiencies in a car, but they will never be able to transcend fundamental flaws. Fernando Alonso couldn’t make a poor McLaren do better. George Russell couldn’t make his Williams win races from the rear of the grid.

Generally, in any one season, you can pretty much judge where every team and driver are on the grid. At the start of 2021, it was clear the Red Bull was better than the Mercedes. It took a few races for them to catch up. They did, but it took time and a few races. By the end of the season, the Mercedes was a better car. Whereas, Aston Martin and Alpine faded. They were focussed on the 2022 car development. Mercedes and Red Bull couldn’t. They had to stay in the game because the stakes and championship were high.

This is the way F1 works, and has always done. If the design rules are the same, season to season, winning teams find it easier to carry previous momentum.

But that goes out the window in 2022 and in a week’s time. You are not necessarily as good as your last race. It counts for nothing.

This really is a season where everyone starts from scratch.

Predictions?

You tell me in the comments. I’ve no clue. The clowns and pretenders will tell you the Bahrain podium next Sunday. But you are likely listening to barstoolers who have an eye on the football match, the other one on the tennis or golf, and their third eye on the refrigerator or toilet. An opinion driven by popular media that began last December when Verstappen overtook Hamilton and they will profess to know more about F1 than I do about quantum mechanics or flower arrangements.

For now, I’ll create a 2022 F1 Preview album here. I’ll also make this article text file available.

Next week, I’ll do my usual GP preview ahead of Bahrain and we’ll do it all again for another year.

Enjoy.