This 2022 Formula 1 season will be remembered as much for the dawn of the Max Verstappen era as much as it will be for the end of Mercedes domination.
The German marque hasn’t had so much as a sniff of title success this year after eight straight years of championship triumph. In fact it’s increasingly unlikely to score so much as a race win.
The question is: is this a blip or the start of a trend?
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The first year of sweeping new regulations was always likely to upset the established order, but it remains to be seen whether Mercedes can now swim against the tide of Red Bull Racing and Ferrari’s head starts to get back on terms next season.
Further down the order, Aston Martin is contemplating how it will handle the feisty Fernando Alonso in a team that’s never been more than a midfield operator and this year is battling to stay ahead of the backmarkers.
Meanwhile, the United States Grand Prix will be down a support race after the W Series cancelled the rest of its season as it fights for its survival.
TOTO WOLFF TEMPERS MERCEDES 2023 CHANCES
Mercedes boss Toto Wolff says he expects Red Bull Racing to be favourite for a double championship again next season as his team continues to struggle to understand its troubled W13.
Mercedes dominated the sport from 2014 until last year, winning seven drivers and constructors championship doubles. It split the teams title with Max Verstappen’s first crown in 2021.
But its ambitious car concept under new rules this year hasn’t paid expected dividends, and though progress has been made, Wolff says it hasn’t been enough to make him confident the team will be in title contention next year.
“Obviously we have missed a lot of development time to find out about bouncing and porpoising and all these things,” he told the UK’s Channel 4. “So it’s clear that Red Bull is in a very favourable position not only for this year but also for the start of next year.
“We’ve talked about over the last few years [how] every series ends one day. There is no team that is winning every single championship over its lifetime. And that has happened.
“It has happened because we got the physics wrong. There’s not nothing mystical about it.
“What we got wrong was just how the car works, but that gives us confidence to sort it out.
“In terms of losing, I think it’s important to acknowledge that we just haven’t just we haven’t done a good enough job, and the guys over in Milton Keynes and Maranello have done.”
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But Wolff said that he was energised by the challenge of fighting back from a losing position, an unfamiliar posture for a team that’s had things all its own way for the best part of the last decade.
“We are eager to be part of the very front fighting for race wins and fighting for a championship,” he said.
“If we were to continue our understanding and development of the car, I think we can catch up quickly.
“This is a ‘learning on the job’ exercise at the moment.
“Our simulations don’t always give us the right results to what the car is going to do on track, but that’s what makes it interesting.
“There is no sense of entitlement for us to win every single championship because that would be foolish.”
Mercedes is 67 points behind Ferrari for second in the constructors standings with four rounds remaining.
DE LA ROSA: ALONSO’S NOT TOUGH, HE’S JUST MISUNDERSTOOD
Long-time Fernando Alonso ally and newly minted Aston Martin ambassador Pedro de la Rosa says Fernando Alonso’s reputation for being a difficult team member is overstated and down to a language barrier in a sport dominated by the British.
Alonso is one of Formula 1’s fiercest competitors, but that ferociousness has often spilt over into his own team, and he’s developed a reputation for sewing internal division and creating chaos.
He’s spectacularly fallen out with both McLaren and Ferrari, and he’s leaving Alpine under somewhat controversial circumstances, having given the team every impression he was intending to renew terms before going behind its back to sign a blockbuster deal with Aston Martin.
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It’s led some to speculate that Alonso’s multiyear deal with the team will come crashing to a premature conclusion once he buts heads with billionaire team owner Lawrence Stroll, whose main aim in arriving gin Formula 1 was to secure his son Lance a seat.
But De la Rosa doesn’t see it that way and says perceptions of Alonso as a tough operator are largely down to a language and cultural barrier.
“I don’t think that Fernando is a difficult guy to handle,” he said. “He’s just very genuine, very honest.
“The fact that English is not his native tongue sometimes make him a bit harsh when he tries to describe things, but he’s very honest, and what he tells you is what he feels about the car, about the team, about how to be competitive.”
De la Rosa said it was up to the team to ensure the relationship stayed honest, with competition Alonso’s only motivator despite a long history of polemics.
“As long as you always tell him exactly what’s going on and what is the truth, you will never have a problem with him,” he said.
“But the moment you try to hide information or he feels that you are trying to keep some information aside, you will have problems.
“He is just a very competitive individual. That’s the reality. If you are as competitive as him, you won’t have any problem with Fernando.”
UNITED STATES GP DOWN A SUPPORT RACE AFTER W SERIES HITS TROUBLE
The all-women W Series has called time on its 2022 season three races early after running into financial trouble last month.
The category was due to travel to the United States Grand Prix on the Formula 1 undercard this weekend but has run out of cash after a deal to fund the sport suddenly collapsed despite contracts being signed.
A double-header finale at the Mexico City Grand Prix was supposed to follow the round in Austin, but instead the series has been declared after seven rounds, with Briton Jamie Chadwick declared champion for the third consecutive season.
Series CEO Catherine Bond Muir said the cancellation of the final three races would allow the sport to secure funding to ensure the 2023 season can go ahead as planned.
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“As a start-up in only our third season of racing, we are always working hard to ensure regularity of funding as we continue to grow our business,” she said.
“We have worked hard to raise the required funding to enable us to finish the season. Unfortunately, it was not possible to do this in the short time frame required following the failure of contracted funds to arrive and the global economic downturn.”
Bond Muir said the sport’s highly publicised troubles have ironically attracted new potential investors interested in saving the series.
“It is well documented that women’s sports receive far less funding than its male counterparts, and W Series is no exception.
“We are incredibly thankful for the help and support we have received in recent weeks following the news of the financial difficulties we’ve been facing, which has accelerated our fundraising process and given us great optimism as we look to 2023 and beyond.”
The W Series operates with a unique business model designed to promote more young women into the upper echelons of the F1 feeder pathway.
Entry is free for drivers, and the winner receives US$500,000, with a further $1 million being split among the rest of the field.
The series has been criticised by some for separating women from mainstream motorsport despite racing being one of the few sports to allow competition between the sexes.
Chadwick, who has dominated the W Series from its inception, has become a member of the Williams driver academy but has thus far failed to move up the junior ladder. She is currently weighing up a move to the United States to compete in Indy Lights.
