F1 2022 thread - see post 1 for rules

New thread same auld Hamilton guff as ended the old thread.

I described that poster as such because its clear that is the opinion of them around here. if your mind is made up and there's no point in me denying it then there's not much i can do. It wasn't what was intended.

It's your opinion on my origional post, its your view on Hamiltons career by what you claimed and your entitled to all of it. All I did was post info and my own contrasting view after being questioned on it. that info could have easily been looked at by a new fan to F1 and they could have seen it as Hamilton only losing out twice or whatever to a team mate in his career.

I'm not even sure what point you're making or why you think the situations are comparable. What point are you making?

2022 Season thread. All this has already been said in the Abu Dhabi race thread. Put it to bed already.

When does 2022 testing start?

I really can’t wait to see the different approaches to these cars. It is a literal blank slate for all teams, nothing at all will carry over for aero.

The underfloor rules should be interesting in how teams approach, it’s not legit “ground effect” but it’ll be better than what we have had for the past few years.

Probably the couple of weeks leading up to testing and a few will launch on the morning of the first test.

Is it too early to start making predictions? I suppose we need to see what testing brings in February.

Things I'd like to see is; new race winners, also Alonso winning a few races. Ferrari mounting a decent challenge. A three or four way title fight. One big team getting the regs VERY wrong, and one small team getting them VERY right. ;-)

Ferrari probably are the ones to watch for next season, that engine upgrade was pretty meaty in the last third of this season and had pretty much zero reliability issues.

The big question is how much time and money did redbull and merc pour into the season as it panned out when the likes of ferrari were (so they say) fully focused on next year's regs?

You'd love to see a brawn type scenario where a back marker makes a big stride and wins the championship but its hard to see it? Alpine are probably one that need to be nailing this, making their own engine and chassis and no customer teams to be dealing with, they've little excuse.

Ferrari are taking a different approach next season as they’ll be the only team who won’t be running a split turbo setup. They developed two engines and earlier this year decided on the risky move of doing something different.

They’ll be running the turbocharger and supercharger at the front of the engine whereas all other teams have the supercharger at the back and turbo at the front. I don’t know if that’s the engine they ran at the end of the season or even if a new engine concept is allowed mid season (I presume it is so long as it meets the regs) but they’ve banked on this for the next 3 years so they’ll need it to work!

I just can't see a repeat of Brawn because I can't see a customer team beating their supplier's works team with the complexity of the hybrid power units - this was the reason Ron Dennis gave for ditching Mercedes for Honda originally. Although that gamble didn't work out, his prediction has generally proven correct, with the only exception through the whole hybrid era has been McLaren beating Renault in 2019 and 2020. Renault of course are no longer supplying customers, only Mercedes and Ferrari are and neither constructor has ever been beaten by a customer under this formula.

Realistically that means there are four teams in with a shot at the championship, Mercedes, Red Bull, Ferrari and Alpine. Ferrari and Alpine have surely been throwing everything they possibly can at the new car and if they're ever going to get back to the front this has to be the year. Mercedes will have split focus more with 2021, but their massive engine advantage is unlikely to be going anywhere and that still leaves them likely to be strong. Red Bull are the most precarious in my view as unlike their competitor's engine advantage which is preserved, their biggest strength is in aero and that's all going in the bin and back to the drawing board for the new cars. Newey is a master of finding opportunities in new regs of course but he's just one man and he's clearly had much of his focus on 2021, in addition to missing a bunch of time after his severe bike crash. The transition of the Honda engines into in-house ownership could see some hiccups too.

I've been keeping my eye on the driver's betting markets and for me Russell, Sainz and Alonso are the value bets right now. I made a fortune betting on Rosberg each way for the 2014 title back in 2013 but unlike the obvious head start Mercedes had with that engine, there's no clear front runner just yet so I think I'll be waiting for testing this time.

Happy New Year! Hopefully we will have another cracking season ahead of us.

I wonder how close it is to the real thing, I doubt it’s the proper car just yet but it’s probably not far off.

Have we any idea how big/long the cars will be compared to this season? I presume they won't be bigger again...

I'm pretty sure it's just a render of the FIA reference model with a Mercedes livery, there won't be any images of the real car for a good while.

Supposedly the new regs are very tight with little room to deviate so the real car may look a lot like that, but we won't know for sure until they hit the track in February, undoubtedly there'll be some loopholes to be found.

That looks to me like the show car from F1 painted in black with the badge stuck on the nose.

Ahh, the T2000.

Liquid metal over endoskeleton! 😁

Money talks and the team is run by a Billionaire .... Not really rocket science that they are able to attract some good people

Hopefully we will get some car launch dates soon.

Hope he lands on his feet - he did a lot of good work for that team