Qualifying
Going into the Sunday race the starting formation had a few surprises. Probably the biggest surprise was the resurrection of the Haas team. I think everybody who has watched the Netflix series “Drive To Survive” will agree with me that Guenther Steiner is one of the most charismatic team managers out there. That is why I was more than happy to see the Haas of Kevin Magnussen start on P7! Furthermore, we have Valterri Bottas in P6 which proves that Bottas is a great driver that will have a great chance to achieve great things at Alfa Romeo this year. Another surprise but the one of the negative sort was that McLaren only managed to secure P13 (Lando Norris) and P18 (Daniel Ricciardo). That is one of the worst qualifyings that McLaren had in a while and it looks like they have a lot of work to do during the season.
Looking to the top of the grid we can see that Ferrari has improved by a lot and have definitely great chances on the title this year. With pole position (Charles Leclerc) and P3 (Carlos Sainz) the Ferrari team seems to have a great car this year. In P2 and P4 we have both Red Bull pilots. Further down the grid we have Lewis Hamilton in P5 and George Russel in P9. This only confirms the problems that Merc had during the pre season and it will be very interesting to see how they will deal with their car throughout the season.
The Race
The first few laps were not very interesting. The positions stayed more or less the same. The first surprises came when the teams started to pit very early. Looking back almost every team was on a three stop strategy which is very new comparing to last season. The first interesting moves came around lap 20 when Verstappen and Leclerc fought for the first position. It was a very cool battle to watch which went over a few laps with several overtaking and counters. After that nothing interesting happened for a while.
The real drama started when Pierre Gasly’s Alpha Tauri went up in smoke. This caused a longer safety car period which pushed the field very close together. It was Leclerc leading, followed by Max, Sainz, Perez and Hamilton. With the Safety Car period over, Verstappen started yet another attack on Leclerc but this seemed to be the wrong decision as his car had already shown some problems during the race. After another lap Verstappen had to retire the car due to technical issues. Unfortunately for Red Bull, the now third placed Perez had a technical issue as well which made both Red Bull cars not finish the race completely. The laughing third was Lewis Hamilton that managed to secure the podium place next to the both Ferraris.
A very nice side note is that Kevin Magnussen was able to secure P5 for the Haas Team which are the first points for about 2 years now. This will definitely help them during the season. All in all, I must say that this season will be a very interesting one. After the first race Ferrari seems to be the car to beat. But behind them are Merc and Red bull that are traditionally very good at adapting during the season. I think that this first race should excite people for more which is why I am happy that next week is already the next race. This time it will take place in Saudi Arabia!
Published by ga38jem on
Hive Sports Talk
On 20th March 2022