Formula 1 Gulf Air Bahrain Grand Prix 2022Formula 1 

  • Thread starter Jimlaad43
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Magnussen almost 6 tenths clear ahead of Mick while not having driven an F1 car for 1,5 years.

That is mighty impressive!

McLaren and Aston Martin were utterly disappointing....
 
So glad the boring dominance of Mercedes is finally over and I am looking forward to a exciting battle between Ferrari and Verstappen. Perez improved a bit but he is just still far away but not so embarassing like Zhou, an expected failure.

And so happy for Bottas that he outqualified the guy who replaced him and is still starting next to Hamilton in an Alfa, K-Mag also blew my brain cells away in a stunning way.

But very sad about McLaren, no words on that unbelievably poor performance.
 
This is essentially the best thing we could hope for.

Red Bull dominating would have been exceptionally boring/annoying. Max excels at being pretty insufferable, along with Christian Horner who gets worse year by year. Max's only interesting when he's chasing or fighting.

Seeing Ferrari show up at the front is superb, because short of cheating, they've not been there for years.

Seeing Mercedes struggle is fine, because of the teams in F1, it's one of the teams that could easily show up at the next race suddenly on pace. This would then give us the unimaginable three-way battle for race wins/podiums and the manufacturers championship.

The most exciting part for me though, is short of Perez, who's only barely a "secondary" driver...none of these top three teams have a designated secondary, slower driver. Sure Red Bull is behind Max 150%, but Perez has proven he's far more capable in that car than say Bottas in the Mercedes. Ferrari has two number ones (more or less) so we could see some of that Vettel/Leclerc style clash. Russell will be more apt to try to prove himself with Lewis if the car is not an automatic win machine. In short we have the potential (if Mercedes catch up) to have six genuine race-winning cars. At the very least, four.

I'm happy as long as there is an actual competition - so if it's Ferrari vs. Red Bull instead of Mercedes vs. Red Bull, I couldn't care less. If we end up with Ferrari vs. Red Bull vs. Mercedes? Icing on the damn cake.

PS: What happened to Russell in Q3? He went from on par with Lewis to a whole second off?
 
Some surprises after qualifying but the true test is yet to come. Best case scenario is fights all across the field as each team shows strengths and weaknesses that will come to play depending on track.

And yet, I can't help but fear someone like Max or Ferrari running away with the race while the results behind them becoming predictable. In other words, all the regulations did was shuffle the names around without actually addressing the fundamental problem.
 
I mean, that is Formula 1 in a nutshell though. I'd love to be wrong and get another 2021 level of racing, but I do agree we stand a 90% chance of ending up with the "usual" Formula 1 result.
 
Well as a neutral I'm relatively happy with how things are looking. Ferrari and Red Bull close at the top should provide some great fresh battles, Mercedes need to find a bit of pace with some upgrades and we'll have a three way battle there soon enough. The rest of the teams are all quite mixed up but with some development going on we could see a lot of shuffling and close battling between them all.

Could be a great season, potentially 6 cars fighting for wins again by mid-season, the rest of the grid also close and fighting.

Also good news

 
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Pretty funny that Mercedes fell off after supposedly focusing on the 2022 car early in the 2021 season, while Red Bull never quit developing the 2021 car and is still at the same level.

And they thought they were being so clever as well...
 
I'm a bit sad to see my team not at the top anymore, but i welcome the new season ahead. I just hope Mercedes can figure it out and climb back to the top again. But i doubt that's realistically going to happen over night.
I'm stoked for Valteri though, and the Ferrari's. Should be a good season hopefully.
 
Nessy
I'm a bit sad to see my team not at the top anymore, but i welcome the new season ahead. I just hope Mercedes can figure it out and climb back to the top again. But i doubt that's realistically going to happen over night.
I'm stoked for Valteri though, and the Ferrari's. Should be a good season hopefully.
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Probably not over night, but I would bet they are going to be in the fight this season. Maybe at Australia.
 
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Zaccheus
Probably not over night, but I would bet they are going to be in the fight this season. Maybe at Australia.
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I hope so. They've definitely got a lot of hard work ahead, but i have a lot of faith in them being able to turn things around.
 
What was the reason for doing away with the rule that said in Q2 the tires you set your fastest time with would be the tires you start the race with?
 
Jezza819
What was the reason for doing away with the rule that said in Q2 the tires you set your fastest time with would be the tires you start the race with?
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I think it had to do with removing a handicap for the midfield cars that managed to squeeze into Q3 on softer tires, i.e., to improve the show.
 
Jezza819
What was the reason for doing away with the rule that said in Q2 the tires you set your fastest time with would be the tires you start the race with?
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Dotini
I think it had to do with removing a handicap for the midfield cars that managed to squeeze into Q3 on softer tires, i.e., to improve the show.
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Yep, basically it didn’t do what it was supposed to do since everyone on the top agreed on one tactic and the midfield were just punished for making it to Q3.
 
Zaccheus
Yep, basically it didn’t do what it was supposed to do since everyone on the top agreed on one tactic and the midfield were just punished for making it to Q3.
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Dotini
I think it had to do with removing a handicap for the midfield cars that managed to squeeze into Q3 on softer tires, i.e., to improve the show.
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So last year if Mercedes and Red Bull started on mediums they had an extra set of softs to use in the race but now they don't? Now everyone is going to be starting on softs.
 
Looked quite promising the performance of the Mercedes yesterday as it seems most of the deficit to Red Bull was drag on the straights. If they can sort out all their issues then they might be super competitive. Hopefully Lewis can still somehow challenge for victory today. Ideally the others will battle hard pushing their tyres too much and Lewis can just pick up the places if Valtteri doesn't get ahead of him. As long as he doesn't get lapped and picks up decent points, will be a decent result.

Will be interesting to see how easy it is for Max to get into passing position against Charles. Red Bull has the straight-line speed advantage (Seems most aero efficient car) over the Ferrari so should be possible for them but Ferrari has strong acceleration and cornering speed over the Red Bull. Really impressive job by Red Bull as by the sounds of it, they spent the least time on the 2022 car compared to rivals. What a time for Ferrari to improve PU by such a margin, no wonder they were OK with the freeze.

It was good to see midfield teams close the gap to Mercedes, hopefully it is easy for Haas to get sponsors given how competitive their car is. What was a bit shocking is given McLaren and Aston Martin probably have budget of the top teams now with less aero testing handicaps, they were really far off the works Mercedes team. Hopefully they can catch up, they don't have luxury of having a PU advantage they had in the previous season relative to the others, might be even a slight disadvantage now with only hybrid and reliability upgrades being possible to overturn any deficit this season. Otherwise they will have to shop around for next season. Looked potentially like Mercedes teams had the power turned back the most in practice but it turns out they are in general just that much slower than the rest but could just be drag.

Looks like it will be a very exciting season. Hopefully Ferrari have the race pace to challenge Red Bull.
 
Jezza819
So last year if Mercedes and Red Bull started on mediums they had an extra set of softs to use in the race but now they don't? Now everyone is going to be starting on softs.
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For this race the softs will probably be the preferred option to start on, but I imagine that will still vary from race to race; Austin last year was a prime example of when the soft was very much a tyre to avoid in race conditions...
 
Samus
Also good news

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And yet...

1647782058942.png


1647782124289.png


Guanyu got his lap time in Q2 deleted for leaving the track at T4, so why is Perez's one and only Q1 lap allowed to stand? He'd be starting 20th (with the agreement of other teams) if this rule was being applied consistently.
 
Peter.
I know all the years of Merc sandbagging and the memes make it hard to believe that they might actually struggle this season, or even this race, but from all the videos and analysis I've seen I can't help but think they might not be that great after all. You have Red Bull being quite fast, Ferrari having a competitive and relatively reliable time, but Mercedes can't merely sandbag and pretend to be slow when they are visibly struggling with the current package. Time will tell, after all.

Otherwise I think Haas might get an early jump on the midfield but taper off as the development race picks up. I also am very excited to see what happens with Mick and KMag. This will be the kind of test to see if Schumacher is the real deal, given that he generally made light work of a very average at best teammate.

That said, Alonso will win, comfortably.
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And this week's lottery numbers are...

In all seriousness though, Ferrari have a hell of a package. A responsive and easier car to drive, especially at low speed, will pay dividends in race trim I think. Didn't expect Alfa to be as good as this, though, so clearly the engine has made big leaps, too.

Mercedes might not win for a while, that 6 tenth gap isn't pretty. Not the kind of gap that disappears without big upgrades or a redesign.
 
There's a goddamn Haas in the Top 5. Need a Guenther reaction cam all season if this is going to be routine.

Edit* Mick with a nice 360 recovery.
 
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