F1 2022: My Early Season Predictions
Sweeping rule changes both technological and financial make this F1’s most unpredictable season in years. Where do I even begin?
After eight years — some far, far more engaging than others — it’s finally time to say goodbye to Formula One’s “turbo-hybrid era”, where cleaner, turbo-charged V6 engines and sweeping aerodynamic changes were introduced to the sport in 2014.
I look back on this era as being a sort of four-act play. Act One established the imperious form of the Mercedes-AMG Petronas team (and notably its devastingly powerful engine) as Lewis Hamilton asserted himself as an all-time great, eclipsed only once by teammate and relentless chaser Nico Rosberg in 2016, in what was a spectacularly close contest. Act Two saw the return of Ferrari to the competitive fore, with Sebastian Vettel putting together two admirable title campaigns but never reaching the stellar form and synergy he had with the Red Bull team years prior — a team that itself was snatching only the occasional win with arguably the strongest driver pairing of Daniel Ricciardo and Max Verstappen.
Act Three in my view was a bitter pill to swallow for fans: a return to Mercedes dominance, Ferrari only able to win races with a legally-questionable engine, Red Bull and new engine partner Honda still playing catch-up. Misfortune and inconsistency prevented Valtteri Bottas mounting a serious challenge to Hamilton the way the latter’s previous teammate did, leaving us savouring the chaos of races with unexpected winners, dramatic driver/team errors, and volatile weather conditions. Act Four, of course, made it all worth while, with the Verstappen-Red Bull-Honda combination clawing their way to the front of the field, conquering the superlative Hamilton-Mercedes pairing by the smallest of margins in the most intense, controversial roller coaster of a title battle we have seen for a decade.
What on earth can we expect to follow this? Can the new 2022 formula — designed to improve on-track overtaking and bolster the financial sustainability of the sport as we know it — really turn the grid on its head the way rules overhauls have in the past? Can we predict anything to follow with any confidence?
Well… I’m going to give it a go regardless. Here’s 10 for you — and read to the end to see my Drivers’/Constructors’ championship predictions in full!
(1) My 2022 Driver’s Champion: Carlos Sainz
This is a big call, I know.
There are five drivers who I believe will be able to mount serious title campaigns, though some may fizzle out sooner than others. Among them: Hamilton, his new teammate George Russell, the Ferrari pairing of Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz, and reigning-champion Verstappen. Though I’m convinced the latter’s Red Bull teammate Sergio Pérez will get closer to the flying Dutchman, I strongly suspect he will not ‘steal’ as many points from his teammate the way the Mercedes and Ferrari pairings might from one another. I also suspect the Red Bull will be just a fraction slower than the Mercedes and Ferrari offerings this season, and that this will counterbalance Max’s favourable position within his team to draw him roughly on par with the Mercedes/Ferrari contenders.
I believe Carlos Sainz is even now an underrated, top-drawer driver on F1’s current grid. He has an Alain Prost-like technical work ethic, and the kind of raw speed his compatriot Fernando Alonso had at the same age (even if the latter’s impeccable, wily racecraft was a touch stronger). Most importantly, he has shown across a season that Charles Leclerc is beatable in the same machinery — even when Sainz was the newcomer forced to learn on the fly in a Ferrari team moulded around their young Monegasque prodigy. To have bested him (albeit barely) across a full season under these circumstances, in my view, is exceptional, and has instilled faith in me that his driving talent and intelligence will reward him in an intense, closely-fought 2022 season.
(2) My 2022 Constructor’s Champion: Ferrari
Yes, I am (just about) convinced and have hopped onboard the Ferrari hype train. But this goes beyond a whimsical longing for the historic Maranello team to give the ardent Italian Tifosi fanbase reason to cheer louder than usual. While Mercedes and Red Bull were slugging it out to the bitter end of the 2021 season, every millisecond mattering more than it has done in years, Ferrari’s lower-stakes duel for 3rd with McLaren was decided with races to spare, and with Ferrari openly shifting their focus almost entirely onto the 2022 regulation changes very early into the season.
Add to this recent changes to permitted time each team may spend testing aerodynamics in wind tunnel facilities (lower position in championship = compensated testing time for next season), and consider also the amount Ferrari must have spent in advance of the new team budget cap kicking in, and in my view the recovering Italian outfit have been gifted a golden opportunity to catch right up to the front of the field. They may well just eclipse Mercedes to a first constructor’s trophy since 2008.
(3) A “Big Four”, with McLaren closing in on the leaders
I sense that McLaren are on a similar upwards trajectory to Ferrari — indeed despite being defeated in the Constructor’s Championship, it was McLaren who bagged not just a spectacular win (at Ferrari’s home race no less!), but a 1–2 finish, with Ricciardo leading home stablemate Lando Norris in Monza.
But this progress hasn’t been quite as rapid as Ferrari’s, and key infrastructure investment briefly stalled during the resultant uncertainty of the COVID-19 pandemic, so I suspect they will start 2022 a strong fourth-fastest, but will finish the season very much a part of the action, and capable of competing on-merit for wins. I’ve no doubt we will see an improved Ricciardo after his surprising struggles adapting to the idiosyncracies of the McLaren machine, and I’m confident we will Norris on the top step of the podium for the first (and surely not last) time in his career.
(4) Aston Martin will top the chasing midfield pack
I underestimated last year just how much Aston Martin would struggle, and I certainly don’t see the Silverstone outfit reaching new owner Lawrence Stroll’s lofty expectations, but I do expect an improvement, and predict they will finish P5… though what happens in the championship standings beneath them is anybody’s guess. There’s simply no telling what permutation of constructors we will be left with, especially with most teams saying they expect to make significant progress forwards (meaning of course, with everybody saying that, most of them won’t do).
(5) Points for every team, but expect a distant P9 and P10
I think the whole grid will be closer this year, with teams and drivers bunched up not just in terms of laptime and overall performance, but literally bunched up more on-track as well. This abstract and physical closing-in will lead to points for each team — though in Haas’ case, I think this will take a bit of magic from Mick Schumacher here and there.
I also think that, as much as 2022 presents a golden opportunity for any team to leapfrog their competition and storm ahead with a brilliant car design or exploitation of new regulations, 2022 is also a danger to every team, and at least somebody other than Haas is surely going to get things a bit wrong and find themselves further off the pace than they were hoping or expecting. I can’t say for sure which team this will be, but I’d imagine Williams or Alfa Romeo might be stuck with their tail-end American counterparts Haas further down the field, whilst the other makes genuine progress. I don’t think any team will be as slow relative to the field as Haas were in 2021 though.
(6) More races cancelled, reschuled and other surprises
I think it’s 50/50 whether we’re going to be starting the new season with the Australian GP at a reformed Melbourne Park in March, and I’m sure this won’t be the only scheduled event cast in doubt during the season. Beloved circuits such as Japan’s iconic Suzuka and Montreal’s Circuit Gilles Villeneuve have both been M.I.A. since 2019 now, and are unfortunately still threatened by the pandemic — as much as many fans desperately hope to see their return.
Having said this, I’m expecting the new Miami Grand Prix to go ahead and to be a bit of a triumph. I also expect the new trialled “Sprint Race” format to continue (despite the ongoing debates over where these events slow into financial regulations) albeit with only a slightly greater presence than in 2021.
(7) Tightest points standings for years
I will stay conveniently-vague on this one, but posit that the points gaps between drivers will be tighter and more evenly spread than we saw in any turbo-hybrid era season. The “Big Four” points gap between P1 (Verstappen) and P8 (Ricciardo) last season was 280.5, and excluding the titanic Max-Lewis battle — almost in a league of their own in 2021 — the P3-P8 gap from Bottas was still a substantial 111 points. I would expect both these figures to be smaller this year, with the “Big Four” teams sharing wins and large point-hauls more evenly throughout the campaign.
Similarly, I wouldn’t expect the kind of points deltas we saw previously in the lower half of the field, with both Alpine drivers for instance claiming 10x the points of Williams’ Nicholas Latifi (who I think will make a surprisingly effective pairing with returning Thai-Brit Alex Albon).
(8) Substantial legal controversy
…from the moment pre-season testing begins in February. These new regulations are tighter and more prescriptive than they have perhaps ever been, but there is no doubt several teams will have found clever tricks under “creative interpretations” of the rules that will be hotly contested by teams that didn’t reach the same solution either by moral choice or lack of imagination. Expect the legal teams to rival the size of teams’ engineering teams this time around, with one or two particularly cheeky innovations to be banned either outright or in time for the following season.
(9) Driver’s Championship in full
(10) Constructor’s Championship in full
So there we are. How do you think I’ve done? What have I got hopelessly wrong and what have I got spot on? Let me know your thoughts and predictions for what promises to be an intriguing season of Formula One.
