F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

Waiting to see how bad Omnicrom affects things.

Barcelona, scheduled for 23 to 25 of February 2022 and Bahrain, from 11 to 13 March 2022.

Mercedes likely to dominate again - I expect them to nail the regs. Red Bull might struggle with the transition from Honda to their own in house engine management and supply. Hoping Ferrari are competitive at the front. And would love to see Haas have a decent car to see what Mick Schumacher can do in it.

Title odds:

Hamilton: 4/5

Max: 5/2

Russell: 13/2

Leclerc: 16/1

Sainz: 25/1

Checo: 33/1

Lando: 40/1

Alonso: 66/1

Ricciardo: 66/1

Gasly: 66/

Hamilton far too short. I like Russell and Alonso at those prices.

My understanding is that the engines will be frozen but they're not frozen yet. So they're all scrambling to gain any performance before they get frozen.

I had thought Honda will do the development and Red Bull will take over and build the engines once frozen now Honda will step away. Then Red Bull will work on designing and building a new engine for the new formula in 2026. I imagine they'll try to poach loads of staff from Honda and other existing teams.

Are the engines frozen at the beginning of 2022 or 2023?

Yeah previous form suggests Mercedes will be favourites but that's all we have to go on.

Word was that Mercedes stopped development very early on this years car. But given the performance gains later in the season I wouldn't be surprised if they focused a bit more on this year's car than they let on. They might not have the focus on next year's car that they would have had in previous years when had the championship in the bag from early on.

Yes Honda are still involved, but they're on a slow retreat and it's doubtful they're throwing as many resources at a project that doesn't have their name on it. There will be a lot of staff handovers and restructuring happening which will undoubtedly be a distraction from regular development.

They could still pull off a big gain of course, Brawn managed it in the past on the chassis side when they were taking over from a Honda retreat. But it's less likely.

And while the regulations are frozen, the engines themselves aren't. As we saw at Brazil, even with a supposedly homologated engine it's possible to make huge performance gains, so you'd expect all engines to make a performance step for next year and Honda / RB will be on the back foot relative to the other three.

Motorsport.com: Shwartzman puts Haas on top as Abu Dhabi F1 test ends.

Someone'sasking about the times from testing this week and I found today's testing times. I think they're completely irrelevant. Mercedes were using a 2019 'mule car'. What's a mule car? It doesn't sound good but what exactly does it refer to?

Some fun facts about our new defending world champion:

He's the first world champion since Niki Lauda who's never raced Michael Schumacher.

He's the first world champion without a Mercedes, Ferrari or Renault engine since Schumacher in the Benetton Ford of 1994.

He's the first world champion who didn't drive the constructor's championship winning car since Mika Hakkinen in 1999.

He's the first world champion powered by a Honda engine since Ayrton Senna.

Once the birthday or New Year honours are announced the recipient is permitted to be referred to as Sir or Dame or put "_BE" after their name, even before the ceremony itself.

If Red Bull replaced Perez with Vandorne, Then put McLaren in the next garage, then put Aston Martin after that but replace Stroll with Latifi you'd get cars 1 (VER) 2 (VAN) 3 (RIC) 4 (NOR) 5 (VET) and 6 (LAT) in that order. Fun history quiz. Before Ricciardo and Norris when was the last time McLaren ran cars 3 and 4 and who had what number.

Close, right pair, right numbers but it was 2012

Button was 1, Hamilton 2 in the McLaren. Brawn were the constructors champions and became Mercedes, so they took 3 and 4 (Schumacher & Rosberg). Red Bull had finished 2nd, so they got 5 and 6 (Vettel & Webber).

Really? People here like?

I find it hard to believe that people who saw Russel absolutely destroy Bottas (and most of the field) in the merc even though he couldn't fit in the thing and didn't know where the menus were on the dash.

I also think that despite what Bottas says about long term projects, if Merc offered him another 1 year contract he would have taken it.

Fun thought experiment: if Lewis shock retires, who would replace him?

Bottas, Vandoorne, deVries, Rosberg?

I believe contractually Vandorne is front of the queue.

BTW, Grosjean never got his spin out did he?

And he should. If he doesn't, then that's the FIA acknowledging there was a problem with the final race, which they've already said there wasn't.

He was their reserve driver in 2020, didn't stop them bringing Russell in however, I'd be surprised if de Vries wasn't brought in before Vandorne tbh (not that I see Hamilton retiring at all)

Grosjean never got his spin as the French GP he was initially meant to do a FP1 in was postoped a week Iirc.

I say Mercedes will want a champion or at least race winner in the car.

Ocon won a race now, would that be enough?

They might draft Vettel in with a two year contract to give Russell support and competition.

Yes he is but it's pretty normal. Toto also manages Bottas and brought him from Williams to Mercedes.

Ocon would be the best choice but he's under a 3 year contract. So it would take Alpine agreeing to let him go in exchange for hard money. Alpine gave him a 3 year deal so they were planning to have him at the team in the long term.

Gasley is pretty unloved by RB so he would be a good option. But RB would never let him go to help Mercedes. They'd be more likely to give him a long term contract if they thought Mercedes wanted him.

Hard to know who they'd get in. All the good options are already signed up. But it's all academic as Hamilton's not going anywhere

RB would have to agree to be bought out of the contract though. And they'd never agree to help Mercedes.

Even of they were neutral towards Mercedes, they would be left wirh the problem of filling the seat for themselves. They have a fantastic driver in great form in Gasley. They would have to take a punt on Albon in his place. There's absolutely no incentive to let Gasley go to help Mercedes out.

RB would be delighted if Mercedes had to fill the seat with a rookie. It would give them a leg up in the constructors championship