2022 Bahrain GP: Post Race Analysis

The first race of the season always has a different level of excitement. All the predictions and speculations after testing, many questions finally get answered.

Ferrari have in fact built an incredible car. Aside from a few minor updates, the car is pretty much still the launch spec. The F1-75 looked fast, consistent, and reliable right out of the box and it lived up to expectations and more. Leclerc looked particularly impressive, the battle with Max was clean and fair but very hard and it shows Leclerc is one incredible talent. Give huge credit to Sainz as well. If this was a difficult race weekend for him, he deserves a gold star for pushing through to claim P2. Perhaps what will get overlooked is Ferrari's pitstops. They were the class of the field. That should make any Ferrari fan ecstatic since Ferrari have a history of botching pitstops and strategy. The perfect start for Ferrari.

Mercedes is definitely faster than they want to make out. Through practice and qualifying the car looked pretty terrible with it's porpoising, and I expected it to be worse in the race with the heavier fuel loads and no DRS (less load on the rear). Perhaps my eyes deceived me, but their problems didn't appear nearly as apparent in the race. In the opening laps and the closing laps, the W13 was a very strong car not that far off the pace of the leaders. That has to give them confidence once they sort out their problems. Also through testing it was suggested that Mercedes were running short gear ratios. This might help explain the absolutely unbelievable launches they got off the start. This could be a huge advantage for them in future races. However their pitstops need work. Lewis Hamilton might be the luckiest human on earth, inheriting another great result at the misfortune of others. But he still drove the car to the best it could do. George Russell... well some things never change. Even after Mercedes saw the Hard tire was trash on Lewis' car, they still put it on George's car. It was a perfect opportunity to try something different. It was the same with Bottas, they wouldn't allow him to go on a different tire strategy than Lewis.

Haas, can you believe it? They openly did not develop their 2021 car last season and put all of their resources into the 2022 car and it has paid off. Fortunately the Ferrari PU is very very good this year, but their aero and chassis departments did an excellent job. Couldn't be happier for Magnusson. What a dream story for him and such a well deserved P5, even with a few mistakes. Mick Schumacher has to be pretty embarrassed. Not only got out-qualified by Kevin, but got thumped in the race. Clearly the car easily capable of points, and gets beat by a rookie in a worse car. Ouch.

Alfa Romeo showed pretty quick in testing and it turns out they are pretty quick. Again, the Ferrari PU allowing the car to perform to it's potential. Bottas looks much happier in his new team and despite some tough moments in the race, battled his way up to a P6 finish. However his start was abysmal. Did I say some things never change? I am really happy for Zhou. A lot of people criticized he only got his seat because he brought big Chinese dollars with him, when the truth is he was quite successful in F2. There is nothing to suggest he isn't deserving to be in F1 just yet.

Alpine did better than expected. Rumors suggested their PU was built for performance over reliability, and it seems to have paid off in one race. Will keep an eye on them over the next 4 or 5 races. Ocon didn't have the greatest race but performed when it counted. Alonso looked quick at times, but a scruffy race for him and we expect more from him.

AlphaTauri are floating in that area where they could be the 4th best team or the 7th best team. Gasly was doing what he normally does until a power failure ended his race in a burst of flames. Yuki had another great start to his season, lets hope he can build off it.

Aston Martin are in fact in really bad shape. First car to launch they didn't really make a lot of changes to it through testing. It didn't look particularly fast and it had some reliability issues, and now in competition it's close to the bottom. Big Stroll's money and giant ego doesn't seem to be helping the team at all. Lance did actually have a good race. P12 is a good result for that car, but the team should be fighting for points, and right now they won't be doing that without some really good luck. Hulkenberg had a very good qualifying result, but a dreadful race. It didn't take him long to get stuck in the back of the running cars.

Williams back to the dull end of the grid, and are probably headed towards finishing dead last by the end of the season already. Such a shame as they had some success last season, but now the Mercedes PU doesn't appear to be so dominant, so their chassis shows to be an even bigger disappointment. It's baffling that a former championship dominating team cannot build a better car. Glad to see Albon back, he looks to be in good spirits so far. Latifi, the Williams' veteran gets beat by his teammate once again. Dude!

McLaren. They were so bad I forgot about them. Without question the biggest disaster from any team. Let this be a lesson to fans that put too much stock into the first days of testing. The Media labelled McLaren as one of the best teams after day 1 in testing, and it turns out they are one of the worst. I am sure they will improve, but to lift themselves up to the 4th best team where they belong is no easy task. Even though Ricciardo finished ahead of Norris, he still looks to be a good bit behind his teammate. The claim about him not having enough seat time is rubbish IMO. Today's drivers can get on the pace within a handful of laps, so missing some practice time doesn't help but I don't think it's the reason why he got outperformed once again. Could be another tough year for Ricciardo.

Red Bull couldn't have had a worse result. The car is fast, their is no question, but I got the impression that Red Bull expected to have an easy win. They knew Ferrari were good, but I don't think they expected to be outclassed by them. Adrian Newey is known for designing some incredible cars, but he has also been known to design some fragile cars. A suspension that gets tweaked by dropping it from the jacks is concerning. Of course the double DNF with what appears to be the same issue not only starts them off with 0 points, but already looking at two PU changes. The car will without question be battling for wins, but mechanical failures can be extremely costly during a season.

Driver of the Day: Charles Leclerc. Easy decision. He was fast, precise, consistent. His battle against Max was amazing and very clever to brake into P1 early to get DRS on the next straight.

Did the 2022 cars live up to the hype? For the most part I'd say so. The cars definitely seem easier to follow than in previous years, thought maybe not as much as we hoped. Of course this could be down to the tires, so it's still too early to tell. We some good racing so the first thoughts are encouraging.

Pirelli get a D- for their tires. The rate of degradation of these tires is horrendous. The undercut being worth 3+ seconds is alarming. The guy sitting in P2 can hold all the best cards now. The tires can't be pushed hard without ruining them, so drivers are driving too conservatively. Put a lot of blame on the FIA for introducing these 18 inch tires just so they could look like a hotwheels car and hopefully attract new fans. Having said that, if it means more variety in the strategies, then that's a win. When's the last time we saw a 3 stop strategy?

A big F for the stewards/FIA. Awful job in policing track limits. Clearly defining the white line as the limit should make this much easier, yet they missed a lot. Blaming systems weren't working right is inexcusable. Also with all the Safety Car controversy and talks to revamp the procedure, and they still screw it up. How on earth did the race go green when half the grid didn't even catch up to the back of the pack?

 

I think their stint on the hard tires killed them. On the soft tires in the first stint and the softs in the last stint, they didn't fall off like a car that's 0.5-0.7 seconds behind should have. They seemed to chew through their tires a little faster and their consistency wasn't as strong, but their outright pace wasn't as far off as they seem to claim.

 

I think Russell went quite a lot longer on the Hards, but ya the tires are trash. The mercedes looked to be particularly bad with tire deg. From a racer's point of view, these Pirelli's must be super frustrating.

 

100% They knew how to make a tire that was fast over 1 lap, yet could last an entire race and yet still be pushed and raced on.

 

At the time I wrote this was right after watching the GP, where it seemed like RBR had a double engine failure based off Max complaining of power loss and then DNF, and Perez complaining of power loss and then a lock up of the rear tires suggesting engine froze up.

It now seems like it was just a fuel pump issue, or perhaps more accurately a run out of gas issue. E10 does for sure use more fuel than non ethanol enriched gasoline. If Red Bull, or anyone, claimed they ran out of fuel because of the fuel pump sounds like a lame excuse. The fuel pump supplies the fuel, the engine is part that uses it. The engine will not use more fuel because the pump is broken. It can certainly not supply enough fuel if it was broken. Not only does the standardized fuel pump feed a high pressure pump, but they also have regulators which feed the injectors at a certain PSI and the engine maps to control how much fuel flow through the injector across different loads and rpm. If I crank the pressure on the fuel regulator from 43 psi to 60 psi, the fuel injectors will now see a reduced duty cycle. F1 engines are much more sophisticated, but I think this was a Red Bull error rather than a coincidental part failure on both cars.

 

It's sad that even with a budget cap the entire field is still spread out so much. Though I was thinking, even if the entire field was just 1 second apart from best to worst, I bet it would still be follow the leader because they have to save fuel, save tires, and now save brakes. Instead of following comfortably 3 seconds behind, they follow 1.5 seconds behind.