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Well, we finally got here - the first race of 2022 has happened, with all its new rules
and new cars and – seemingly – a new pecking order.
For now.
So I thought the best thing to do off the back of a weekend full of surprises and flurries
of information was to go over some of the talking points out of the Bahrain Grand Prix
weekend as we bid to understand exactly how this season is starting to shape up.
So Ferrari look good, don’t they?
The funny thing is, even though they seemed to have the strongest, most consistent test
with solid lap times and high mileage across all six days of testing, it always felt like
Red Bull had the better package.
And so it was right up until Q3 really, when Leclerc squeaked out a mighty pole position
lap.
But even then, we expected a mighty fightback from Verstappen and Red Bull.
And although they did push Ferrari hard, Leclerc seemed to be in control of this race.
Great consistent pace, able to peg a comfort gap to Verstappen for the most part and confident
enough to risk losing track position at turn 1 in order to grab the DRS down to turn four.
Charles said himself he would brake and position himself to follow Verstappen through turns
2 and 3 to get a nice run on him down the second straight with the boost of DRS to attack
him back into turn 4.
Three times he did this into turn one.
And yielding track position means he had strong enough belief that he could grab that position
back again.
If it was more marginal he would have defended harder and been more aggressive into the first
corner.
Which means: a) the Ferrari has Red Bull beating pace and b) at Bahrain at least, these cars
can fight.
Which brings us onto the big question of these new cars.
Are they working?
Well, look this is only one race.
And the first time we’ve properly been able to test these cars following one another.
They did it a bit in testing, but only in a race are they going to do it with full purpose.
And … you know what?
They do seem to follow each other well.
If we look at the Leclerc/Verstappen battle again, Verstappen was able to mount an attack
on Leclerc lap after lap.
And yes, that battle was DRS assisted but the important part is that Verstappen was
able to stay close through all the wiggly bits and stay within striking range without
losing ground.
That’s great.
And it’s something we saw through the field, with cars being able to hang on to their rivals
ahead throughout a lap without losing much ground.
Now, yes, this is only one race and one track.
It was night so temps are much lower, which reduces some of the issues tyres will get
with overheating when following.
But it’s definitely a good start.
We expected and hoped this year would show a noticeable, incremental improvement on the
old cars and I think it has.
Now, Verstappen did have to break off his attack after a few laps after eventually taking
too much life out of the tyres.
You can’t keep doing that forever.
But that leads up nicely onto the question of these new tyres.
So Pirelli wanted to induce more two stop strategies without making degradation an absolute
nightmare.
And actually, yeah, despite my own scepticism, two stops were absolutely the way to go: some
drivers like Max Verstappen even went for a three stopper, without the intervention
of the final Safety Car.
These tyres definitely had a limited life, and yes drivers did have to be mindful of
that in how they took life out of the tyres (more on that in just a second) but in race
1, it didn’t seem to be pendulum swinging over them that it might have been in other
races.
The drivers mostly drove as they needed to until they felt the tyres going, then they
pitted.
There was a bit of complaining: Verstappen seemed to feel the tyres going off a little
earlier than he liked and, indeed, went onto a three stop strategy to favour pushing hard
on new tyres over nursing old ones.
And because Mercedes weren’t the focus of this race, we have no idea how many times
Lewis Hamilton got on the radio to Bono about the tyres.
But I read this first race as a positive as we got a clear advantage with two stopping,
as Pirelli wanted, and on top of that we saw teams trying a number of different strategies.
The harder end of the compound scale ended up being quite tricky to get to work here,
so you could spot the teams who were flailing somewhat when they went “screw it” and
tried the hard tyres.
An error.
Something we did see a smidgen of was the effect of the tyre blankets being reduced
to 70 degrees this year.
With tyres a little cooler out of the pits, the outlap takes that little bit longer to
get full performance from the rubber.
This was most clear with Hamilton who stopped for hards and struggled so hard for grip in
the first half of the lap that Zhou and Bottas overtook him.
While this was a bit of an outlier with the cold night race and hard tyres on a very heavy
car, this could end up adding a dimension to outlaps if drivers need to work warming
up the rubber into their first lap out of the bits.
All part of the skill to maintain and gain position through the stops.
And speaking of out laps, Max Verstappen was told not to push too hard on his out laps
for the good of the rubber, but both times he felt he could have grabbed the lead had
he been able to push to the maximum.
And maybe he would have.
Certainly through the first set of stops.
But we saw that car pushed its tyres a bit harder than the Ferrari did.
Leclerc stopped only to cover off Verstappen, after all.
We heard a lot less complaining from him - partly due to the fact that the race leader will
benefit from running in cool, clear air, of course.
Nonetheless, we saw before how Leclerc had the pace and the confidence to position himself
to reovertake Verstappen.
Had Verstappen taken significant life out of his tyres right out of the box, he would
likely have been a sitting duck to Leclerc over the course of the stint.
Something we’ll never know for sure of course, but while of course Verstappen was angry for
not being able to grab what was in front of him, it seems likely he would have suffered
in the long run anyway.
But, to an extent, Max was still right of course.
It’s easier to deal with your problem from the lead than from second.
Track position remains key.
Elsewhere in the field it looks like controlling porpoising without compromising your aerodynamics
is going to be a big part of being competitive this season.
Mercedes are suffering from porpoising and it is hammering them.
Through the middle of the lap, they have good front-running pace for the most part.
But the porpoising - the bouncing rear end - they experience coming down the back straight
and pit straight are effecting them badly into the last and first corners.
To the tune of several tenths.
The general consensus is that Mercedes have a very fast car, hampered by problems that
they need to get on top of fast.
And frankly, they were handed a huge lifeline by Red Bull’s double retirement.
If Merc are able to get this car back to the front, this result in Bahrain could make a
huge difference to their year.
Aston Martin seem to have the same problems as the Mercedes, except they put in measures
to stop the porpoising but in a way that has completely hampered their performance.
So they need to dial their car in from the other direction.
McLaren have solved their brake issues, seemingly, but their extremely hampered testing means
they are behind.
The team say the car is behaving well, but is just lacking grip.
We expect a team like McLaren to bring this car up through the field but what an extremely
competitive field we have this year.
Everyone is gunning for good points now.
But here’s the important part.
We are at the steep end of the development curve right now.
These 2022 regulation cars are fresh out of the box.
We are here right now on this curve.
This means that, through this steep part of the line, teams are going to be finding performance
and development faster than ever.
In a couple of years, we’ll be up at the shallow end of the curve where teams are finding
fractions of tenths here and there with a slightly different shape of front wing, or
new slot in the floor edge.
But here they’ll be working out ways to cut seconds out of the car’s performance
over this season.
And as such, the pecking order today will most likely not be the pecking order by half
way through the season.
These teams will be mixing it up throughout the year.
Alfa and Haas have had a great start - can they keep up?
Will Mercedes out develop Ferrari and Red Bull?
Will McLaren actually get back into that top 3 fight like they planned?
It’s all going to go off this year and I, for one, will be thrilled to see it.
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