We’re already past the halfway point as the 2022 Formula 1 season reaches the traditional summer break, which is always a good time to take stock of the state of play up and down the paddock. The first year of this new generation of F1 cars has thrown some real curve balls. We’ve seen a re-shuffle of the pecking order, had some great races and, on the whole, I’ve enjoyed the opening 13 rounds of the year so far.
The biggest surprise, of course, has been the Mercedes-AMG story. I remember being in the pit garage at Silverstone back in February at the launch of the new car. By then we’d already seen over half the grid and the immediate reaction when looking at the beautiful packaging was that the W13 was going to blitz the opposition.
Then they introduced the dramatic zero-sidepod configuration in Bahrain and expectations of dominance ramped up another notch. As the week of testing unfolded, however, it became clear that all was not well in the silver camp, but it was only when we got to the first qualifying session that teams stopped sandbagging and we could see where things truly stood.
