Saudi Arabian Grand Prix Review

After the dramas of Friday at the Corniche circuit in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, the race on Sunday went smooth.The poll put out by my twitter found that 72% of the respondents thought there would be at least three red flags during the race. I was surprised when by the end of the race, there were none at all. I expected at least two, similar to last year, but we were proven wrong. The safety of the circuit is definitely still in question even though there were no major incidents.

Heaven

Red Bull-

After the disastrous double DNF in the Bahrain Grand Prix, it was a good haul of points with Verstappen taking his first win of the season. Perez finally got pole position, now holding the record for longest wait for first win and first pole position. Unfortunately Perez was unable to convert it to victory after the safety car period that came out right after he did his pit stop. This allowed the Ferraris behind to both pit and come out before Perez could make it around the lap. It was a bit unlucky for him. A fourth place finish is still an improvement on last races DNFs. This puts Red Bull in third place in the constructors championship.

Mclaren-

Similarly to Red Bull, McLaren had struggled in Bahrain, the team finishing P14 and P15 in Bahrain. Daniel Ricciardo was running well in 11th before having a driveshaft problem, reportedly losing drive. Lando scored McLaren’s first points of the season finishing P7. COming from a double nonpoints finish to successfully scoring 6 points could prove paramount at the end of the season. They seem to have a better package at higher speed circuits, so hopefully they can continue this run of good form in Australia.

Ferrari-

The Ferrari hype train only has a few tickets left and they’re for the last minute takers. Their show of pace once again demonstrates they are firmly in a title battle this year. After two back-to-back double podium finishes, they have shown their car has the pace. It seems the Driver’s title battle will at least have Charles Leclerc in it, and maybe both him and teammate Carlos Sainz.

Hell

Williams-

A sad tale of the double DNF, but not because of engine problems. Many this season were very excited to see if the least experienced driver pairing would improve on last year or their previous seasons. The past two races have shown there is still room for improvement. Latifi hit a wall during the race, which caused a safety car. Latifi has shown the mistake of having paydrivers. Williams released a statement last year saying that they no longer need the money Latifi brings in because Dorilton Capital bought the team. Now’s the time to show him the door out. He has yet to show any form of performance or improvement. Their car pace seems to be mediocre but as Latifi mentioned, it is an unpredictable car, which leads to more moments of over/understeer. Albon had a preventable crash in the last part of the Grand Prix rounding out both drivers with incidents. For this team to be successful for the rest of the season, the drivers need to have a smooth weekend without mistakes. Hopefully they’ll get into the points a few times this year.

Aston Martin-

The curious case of the Strolls. Aston Martin’s performance has been a bit of a dud. Once again they don’t bring any points home with their cars finishing last of the finishers. Sebastian Vettel should be back to race after testing positive for COVID-19 before the race in Bahrain. Hopefully he can bring more performance out the car and challenge further up the field.

My take:

The 2022 regulations have done very well. The new regulations have shown this year that there are no “backmarker teams.” Last year, the Haas’, Alfa Romeos, and Williams would be eliminated first. This year, there are no guarantees of who will/won’t make it out of Q1, with Hamilton getting knocked out for first time in Q1 on pace since 2009. This makes Quali more interesting with everyone being at risk of being eliminated.

With the fight between the Alpines as racing evidence, they are able to have closer fights. The DRS battles between Leclerc and Verstappen are over the line for me. They make DRS a more dangerous part of the racing. If Sainz or Perez were right behind the two of them, it would have made for an incident. An easy fix would be to move the detection zone to the exit of the corners.

F1 needs to go through the calendar for next season and critique each circuit and make sure each one is safe enough to return to, both on and off track. The stressful weekend was full of off track drama, like a missile strike nearby and crashes that were more severe than they needed to be. All this would be fixed if F1 changed their policies of tracks.

Many rumors are growing about upgrade packages arriving at the next race in Australia, so the pecking order may change then. The upgrades have increased my interest not only because of on track action but now we get to see technical advancements with so many differing cars. Hopefully we’ll get a bit of a mixup throughout the season.