The Official Formula One and General Motorsport for the 2022 season! Has the 2nd era of Red Bull begun?

Hello everyone, its that time of the year again where I put all my effort for creating new threads and topics into just this one! Much like with the previous years, I expect F1 will be at the forefront of our discussions, maybe even more so with the new era of F1 cars that all of the teams are flat out designing ready for the start of the season on March 20th in Bahrain.

As with the previous years threads, lets start with the driver line up! I will be putting Hamilton down, as despite the rumours about him leaving the sport after missing out on his 8th WDC title, I personally cannot see him leaving the sport just yet! The teams will be listed in order of their 2021 WCC finishing position, no favouritism here!

Team Lineups

Mercedes - Lewis Hamilton (44) & George Russell (63)
Red Bull Racing - Max Verstappen (1, normally runs 33) & Sergio Perez (11)
Ferrari - Charles Leclerc (16) & Carlos Sainz (55)
McLaren - Lando Norris (4) & Daniel Ricciardo (3)
Alpine - Fernando Alonso (14) & Esteban Ocon (31)
Alpha Tauri - Pierre Gasly (10) & Yuki Tsunoda (22)
Aston Martin Aramco Cognizant Racing - Sebastian Vettel (5) & Lance Stroll (18)
Williams - Nicolas Latifi (6) & Alexander Albon (23)a
Alfa Romeo - Valtteri Bottas (77) & Zhou Guanyu (24)
Haas - Mick Schumacher (47) & Nikita Mazepin (9)

The only real ‘big’ move is the highly rated George Russell getting promoted to Mercedes alongside Lewis Hamilton, with the new regulations the majority of teams seem to have wanted to keep some degree of consistency, except Alfa Romeo who clearly don’t. One thing I will be happy to see back is the number 1 adorning one of the F1 cars, I admire Hamilton for not running it but there’s something quite special about in my opinion.

2021 season recap/thoughts

Regardless of your thoughts on how the season ended under a slightly controversial cloud, it was one hell of an F1 season! We had Hamilton looking to break Michael Schumacher’s almost unthinkable (at one point) tally of 7 WDCs, we had a very hungry (too hungry at times) Max Verstappen looking to become WDC for the very first time. We had old faces returning to the grid in Alonso, historic marques making their comeback in Aston Martin. With how the line was before the season that the regulations were staying stable we all probably thought it’d be another Mercedes whitewash but how wrong we were!

Now onto a brief recap of a (mostly) fantastic season of Formula 1. The season very much started with how it was going to end, Hamilton and Verstappen fighting it out around the Sakhir circuit in Bahrain with Hamilton taking the win by a narrow margin after Verstappen was told to give up first place as he overtook off the track. The following rounds seemed to mirror the first race, despite the difference in car performance in the first part of the season it was only going to be one of these two who would eventually win the WDC. As the rounds progressed it looked to be in Red Bull’s hands to lose, Hamilton was close but the Mercedes just didn’t seem to have the raw pace to regularly match the Red Bull and Verstappen was more than happy to get his elbows out to try and assert his authority on the race track, this ultimately led to a huge crash for Verstappen at the British Grand Prix at Silverstone, after winning the sprint qualifying race it looked set to go Verstappen’s way on the Sunday as well, however Hamilton decided not to back down this time and into Copse they touched after a bold attempt to overtake Verstappen put him off and into the barriers (although if you listened to Red Bull and Christian Horner in the aftermath, it was a clear attempt on Verstappen’s life that Hamilton was very lucky to only get a 10 second penalty for), despite this Hamilton still managed to get back past the Ferrari of Leclerc and win his home Grand Prix. We had a couple of wonderfully hectic races in the first half of the season as well, with Perez taking a opportunistic win in Baku with a surprise 2nd place for Vettel ( ) and 3rd for Gasly, then rain came into play in Hungary giving us a brand new winner in F1 in Esteban Ocon, who did a fantastic job of keeping a pushing Vettel behind him (who was later DQ’d but thats beside the point ) after Bottas and Stroll did their best to wipe out as much of the grid as possible at T1.

The second half of the season got off to a very poor start at Belgium, normally one of my highlights on the season purely for the immense track alone but we sadly didn’t get a race, albeit we got a result which gave Verstappen another win in a hectic season, the star of this weekend was George Russell though, who qualified superbly in the tricky conditions on Saturday to line up 2nd and due to the none race he picked up his first podium in F1. Next up was Verstappen’s home Grand Prix which he went on to dominate. Next up was another hectic race in Monza, due to poor race craft from Verstappen, crashing himself and Hamilton both out of the race and allowing for the only 1-2 result of the season to be claimed by none other than McLaren with Ricciardo leading the way from Norris after his one really good weekend of the season. Russia was next and in another shocker, we actually had a good race round here! We came so close to seeing a second, first time winner in F1 as well in Lando Norris but ultimately the weather gods intervened yet again and Hamilton benefitted from fitting the intermediate tyres while Norris chanced staying out on the slicks a laps too long

Getting into the back end of the season, tension was clearly rising in both Mercedes and Red Bull, performance had more or less evened out and after Turkey, where we saw an almost perfect race from Bottas each of Verstappen and Hamilton claimed 3 wins a piece from the final 6 races. I have to say I saw one of Hamilton’s strongest weekends in all the years I’ve been watching F1, DQ’d from standard qualifying to start the sprint qualifying/race in last position he raced hard, yet fairly to finish in 5th, with his engine penalty that meant he would start the Grand Prix from 10th yet he still went on to win the Brazilian Grand Prix despite Verstappen’s best efforts to keep him behind, even including a huge moment of under steer for him meaning both drivers went well off track, this didn’t deter Hamilton though and he went on to win the race, overtaking 24 cars In total over the weekend, I was in awe watching him that weekend. The next bout of controversy came at Jeddah, where for once I was genuinely wincing watching them race round the high speed ‘street’ track with its numerous blind corners, small runoffs and high speed but that was far from the biggest issue with the weekend. As Hamilton and Verstappen were fighting hard on track Verstappen did the unthinkable and brake checked Hamilton when he had been told to yield the place to Hamilton (despite the fact that Hamilton had not been told at that moment) yet he got off very lightly considering the offence, a 10 second penalty that ensured his 2nd place remained and allowed our championship contenders to head into the final race level on points.

Abu Dhabi, the decider. With a modified track no one really knew how it was going to pan out about whether Mercedes or Red Bull would have the upper hand, as it happened Red Bull were the better in qualifying but Mercedes clearly had the better race car as Hamilton jumped Vertsappen off the line and was extending his lead very comfortably except for when Perez did an astounding job of racing Hamilton to try and bring his teammate back into contention for the win, it so nearly worked as well but eventually Hamilton passed and continued to build his lead on his hard tyres. Then towards the end of the race, disaster struck, Latifi and Schumacher tangled, Latifi stranded on track the SC was called out which many thought would mean the race would end behind the SC, yet Toto Wolff and Christian Horner were both bickering onto the FIA and Michael Masi about whether the race should be restarted or not, ultimately (rightly or wrongly) the race was restarted with just over a lap to go, Verstappen’s large gap back to 3rd allowed him to pit for much fresher soft tyres while Hamilton was stuck on 40 odd lap old hard tyres, he was very much a sitting duck on the restart and Verstappen passed him with relative ease going into the reconfigured T5 and pulled out a small gap to win his first WDC in F1, yet the controversy was far from over, Mercedes appealed the result and I feel would have had a chance of overturning the result had they gone to court with it as proper procedures were not followed, as it happened they opted not to follow it through and will most likely be firing on all cylinders for 2022, very hungry not to let Red Bull and Verstappen get onto a winning start with the new era of F1 cars.

That will mark the end of the opening post, of course this is a general motorsport thread so everyone is free to talk any motorsport whether it be on two or 4 wheels! Hope everyone enjoys the various racing on offer this year

F1 starts on the 18th of March, with the Grand Prix taking place on the 20th, more details should be in the link below!

F1 2022 calendar, https://www.formula1.com/en/racing/2022.html

Previous years threads,

2019 - https://grcade.co.uk/t:the-official-formula-1-and-general-motorsport-thread-for-2019?f=7&hilit=2020+F1+2020+Formula+One+2020
2020 - https://grcade.co.uk/t:the-official-formula-one-and-general-motorsport-thread-for-the-2020-season?f=7&hilit=2020+F1+2020+Formula+One+2020
2021- https://grcade.co.uk/t:the-official-formula-one-and-general-motorsport-thread-for-the-2021-season-mercedes-domination-set-to-continue?f=7
2022 - https://grcade.co.uk/t:the-official-formula-one-and-general-motorsport-for-the-2022-season-has-the-2nd-era-of-red-bull-begun?f=7&p=4916325#p4916325

That recap turned out to be a little longer than I expected! I don’t blame anyone if they don’t read it all

As a bit of fun I thought it’d be nice to see what everyone’s favourite moment from the 2021 season was though, I’ll start it off by saying Vettel’s maiden podium for Aston Martin was a joy to see, after he’d had a torrid time to the end of his Ferrari career I was delighted to see him on the podium so early for his new team, he was so close to grabbing a second podium too, if only he’d saved a little more fuel throughout the race!

First international race takes place tomorrow. The Dubai 24 Hours

What time does that start? Is it being streamed live? I know a fair few of the 24 hour races are streamed freely, is it using the new layout or the older, poorer track layout?

Looking forward to the car launches, it'll be interesting to see cars from the new rule set for the first time.

Robbo-92 wrote:That recap turned out to be a little longer than I expected! I don’t blame anyone if they don’t read it all

As a bit of fun I thought it’d be nice to see what everyone’s favourite moment from the 2021 season was though, I’ll start it off by saying Vettel’s maiden podium for Aston Martin was a joy to see, after he’d had a torrid time to the end of his Ferrari career I was delighted to see him on the podium so early for his new team, he was so close to grabbing a second podium too, if only he’d saved a little more fuel throughout the race!

Great opening post

Favourite moment was Hamilton in Brazil, with all the talk before the event of him having to take a power unit penalty meaning the championship was over. Over and over they tried to penalise him, and he just shat on everyone, keeping the championship alive.

Then they rigged the championship result for Netflix and memes

Thanks Robbo, top job. The F1 threads have slowly become my favourite thread over the past couple of years, it’s a great community where people generally get along well and can mostly discuss what happens without bickering like in other sports.

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:Thanks Robbo, top job. The F1 threads have slowly become my favourite thread over the past couple of years, it’s a great community where people generally get along well and can mostly discuss what happens without bickering like in other sports.

Spoken like a true Max fan

Vermilion wrote:Looking forward to the car launches, it'll be interesting to see cars from the new rule set for the first time.

It certainly will be, the teams don’t seem to think they’ll be that much slower now, so if we can have more or less cars with the same lap time yet able to follow a lot easier through high speed corners they could be on to a winner, hopefully we don’t have to wait till the second test to get good images of the cars.

floydfreak wrote:

I knew he was into his cars but he has some cracking motors in there! Also Jodie Kidd

Victor Mildew wrote:

Robbo-92 wrote:That recap turned out to be a little longer than I expected! I don’t blame anyone if they don’t read it all

As a bit of fun I thought it’d be nice to see what everyone’s favourite moment from the 2021 season was though, I’ll start it off by saying Vettel’s maiden podium for Aston Martin was a joy to see, after he’d had a torrid time to the end of his Ferrari career I was delighted to see him on the podium so early for his new team, he was so close to grabbing a second podium too, if only he’d saved a little more fuel throughout the race!

Great opening post

Favourite moment was Hamilton in Brazil, with all the talk before the event of him having to take a power unit penalty meaning the championship was over. Over and over they tried to penalise him, and he just shat on everyone, keeping the championship alive.

Then they rigged the championship result for Netflix and memes

Thanks

Hamilton charging through the field, twice at Brazil was definitely my second moment of the year, he was just on supreme form all weekend, even for such a consistently strong driver across the season it came as a bit of a shock at just how on it he was. I’m actually looking forward to the end of DTS series 4, reckon it’ll look like a right mess

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:Thanks Robbo, top job. The F1 threads have slowly become my favourite thread over the past couple of years, it’s a great community where people generally get along well and can mostly discuss what happens without bickering like in other sports.

I just love talking about F1 whether our opinions align or not, it’s one of the few things I’m genuinely passionate about these days! Let’s hope for plenty of discussion this year

floydfreak wrote:

Guildford

Victor Mildew wrote:

Robbo-92 wrote:That recap turned out to be a little longer than I expected! I don’t blame anyone if they don’t read it all

As a bit of fun I thought it’d be nice to see what everyone’s favourite moment from the 2021 season was though, I’ll start it off by saying Vettel’s maiden podium for Aston Martin was a joy to see, after he’d had a torrid time to the end of his Ferrari career I was delighted to see him on the podium so early for his new team, he was so close to grabbing a second podium too, if only he’d saved a little more fuel throughout the race!

Great opening post

Favourite moment was Hamilton in Brazil, with all the talk before the event of him having to take a power unit penalty meaning the championship was over. Over and over they tried to penalise him, and he just shat on everyone, keeping the championship alive.

Then they rigged the championship result for Netflix and memes

Yeah, Hamilton in Brazil for me as well. That whole weekend he was on another level. Even my wife, who doesn't really care about the F1, got right into it. Had her thoroughly invested for the rest of the season too.

Victor Mildew wrote:

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:Thanks Robbo, top job. The F1 threads have slowly become my favourite thread over the past couple of years, it’s a great community where people generally get along well and can mostly discuss what happens without bickering like in other sports.

Spoken like a true Max fan

Definitely not a max fan

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:

Victor Mildew wrote:

Return_of_the_STAR wrote:Thanks Robbo, top job. The F1 threads have slowly become my favourite thread over the past couple of years, it’s a great community where people generally get along well and can mostly discuss what happens without bickering like in other sports.

Spoken like a true Max fan

Definitely not a max fan

That's exactly the kind of thing a Max fan would say

Cheeky Devlin wrote:Yeah, Hamilton in Brazil for me as well. That whole weekend he was on another level. Even my wife, who doesn't really care about the F1, got right into it. Had her thoroughly invested for the rest of the season too.

My Mrs loves F1 but has never been a Hamilton fan ( she loves Vettel the most), but Hamilton's performance in the last half of the season totally coveted her

My favourite moment of the 2021 season was the Monza collision.

It was a decent slice of controversy, no one got hurt, and it reminded me of when Schumi and Hill used to end up in the gravel together.

Favourite moment for me was the McLaren 1-2. Been a very long time coming.

The Italian Grand Prix at Monza was a good one so I’m really not surprised to see it featured a few times already alongside Hamiltons superb weekend in Brazil. Crazy to think that considering the pace advantage of Mercedes and Red Bull that neither of those teams achieved a 1-2 finish all season as well.

Just seen on social media that Aston Martin seem to be hinting they’ll be showing off their 2022 car on the 10th of February, can’t wait!

twitter.com/astonmartinf1/status/1481913987386257415

Edit, if anyone was wondering I’ve voted for Vettel to win the WDC alongside Mercedes the constructors, while I doubt it’ll happen I’d love to see Vettel get a 5th WDC

Aston have announced their new team principal. The amusingly titled Mike Krack.

I’m surprised its not Martian Whitmarsh after he was signed up late last year.

Neo Cortex wrote:Aston have announced their new team principal. The amusingly titled Mike Krack.

"Hi thanks, yeah nice to meet - it's 'Michael' be the way - good to be on board!"

Looking forward to this season, hopefully Hamilton is sticking around for at least this one.