As the third round of the season beckons Ferrari are the team to beat. But the story of 2022 is far from written. Nevertheless, most would rather be in Charles Leclerc’s position than not.
The Ferrari driver sits atop the driver’s standings with an impressive 71 points. In Australia the Ferrari stretched its legs both in terms of pace and tyre management. It might be that the Albert Park circuit, always considered an outlier, played to the Ferrari’s strengths but it was quick, in Leclerc’s hands, in Bahrain too.
Red Bull’s reliability woes, seemingly centered around the fuel system, and the pace deficit to Ferrari in Australia, will ring some alarm bells in Milton Keynes. Verstappen currently sits xx points behind the championship leader and has said there is no use in thinking of a title fight before the issues around reliability are solved. There’s no doubt that Red Bull have a quick car, but it is an edgy one too. It looks to have a narrower operating window than the Ferrari and, as such, finding a happy balance appears a bit trickier.
Mercedes too remains on the back-foot. The porpoising (bouncing) issue is a serious one. Unlike Ferrari, who also experience severe porpoising, the Merc doesn’t settle down as the speed bleeds off and this forces all sorts of aero, and other, compromises which has an overall detrimental impact on lap time. But if the team can find a solution to the issue the Merc clearly has some pace in it. It’s just a matter of how soon the issues can be resolved.
Believe it or not all of this is good news. It means that F1 2022 is not going to be predictable by any means. The new cars are temperamental and not easy to predict from one circuit to the next. The days of teams having terabytes of data on performance and setups are gone. They’ve been replaced by an unpredictability that has infused the season with a genuine curiosity. And if Red Bull and Merc can, consistently, join in the battle it will amplify the spectacle to even greater heights. There is even the possibility of teams such as Alpine and McLaren hitting the sweet spot on any given Sunday and sticking their noses in.
Imola was parachuted into the calendar as a stopgap during the worst of the global covid pandemic. It proved so popular amongst fans and drivers though that it has since maintained its place on the roster. The circuit, located in San Marino, is one steeped with both tragedy and the memory of incredible racing. It is here of course that Ayrton Senna fatally crashed in 1994. But it is here too that a young Fernando Alonso withstood a barrage of pressure from 7-time world champion Michael Schumacher in the closing stages of the 2005 grand prix. Amazingly the same Fernando Alonso lines up on the grid this weekend while Mick represents the Schumacher name for Haas.
This weekend’s race will follow the sprint race format which means a one-hour practice session on Friday followed by qualifying on Friday afternoon (17:00 SA time). Saturday is reserved for the second free-practice session and the Sprint race (16:30 SA time) while the grand prix remains on Sunday with a start-time of 15:00 SA time.
