If Formula 1 awarded points based on how strenuously a team denies it has a fast car, Mercedes would already be well on the way to the 2022 championship.
It’s Mercedes’s great unheralded strength. More than building championship-winning machines, the team from Brackley is expert at insisting that it’s not the favourite ahead of the first race.
Let’s revisit some of Hamilton’s preseason appraisals of years past.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSMad Max’s new title threat, fears for Ricciardo’s McLaren: Winners and losers from final F1 test
The Formula 1 pre-season closed in Bahrain on Saturday night, and through the haze of testing uncertainty came one seemingly irrefutable fact: Red Bull Racing is the team to beat.
It’s notoriously difficult to deduce an accurate competitive order from pre-season testing times. It’s impossible to know for certain fuel levels and engine modes, and with lap times being set at different times of day, when the track is in different conditions, no two laps can be directly comparable.
But after six days of testing at two different tracks we can begin to sketch the basic outline of the field ahead of next weekend’s season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix, and some undoubted winners and losers are starting to take shape.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSThe first of the final three days of F1 testing is in the books, but all anyone wants to talk about is Mercedes.
The Silver Arrows unveiled a dramatically updated package in the Bahrain pit lane, impressing and stoking controversy in equal measure in what could be the sport’s first flashpoint of the year.
Further down the pitlane, Italy’s two teams performed strongly, with Pierre Gasly setting the day’s fastest time, while Valtteri Bottas’s new team, Alfa Romeo, finally got a clean day of running in the books after a difficult first test in Spain.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSFormula 1 closes its pre-season campaign this weekend, with three days of testing beginning Thursday (tonight) at the Bahrain International Circuit.
Just 30 hours of crucial track time remains before the first round of the season, and while some teams will be aiming to build on decent foundations laid during February testing, several others are already playing catch-up thanks to reliability problems.
Once the sun sets in Sakhir on Saturday night we’ll have a rough understanding of the competitive order, but with the first race taking place at this same venue, expect some teams to keep at least a card or two close to their chests for another week.
Continue reading on FOX SPORTSIt’s rare for there to be so much buzz around Formula 1 testing, but 2022 is no ordinary pre-season.
This year the cars are new — and we mean new new. The technical rules have been completely rewritten by a specially-assembled team of crack engineers not simply to look more exciting, but to improve the racing over what will be a record-breaking 23-round season.
To level the playing field spending is restricted to a base level of around $190 million per season — less than half the pre-pandemic spending of some of the biggest teams. The lowest-ranked teams in the championship are also allowed more time in the wind tunnel to try to equalise performance, similar to a football draft.
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