F1 2022: Saudi Arabia

The second race of the season again failed to disappoint. There’s only been two races, and this season is already wild.

Cutting straight to the chase - Lewis Hamilton qualified 16th after a qualifying session which was largely overshadowed by a serious crash involving Mick Schumacher. Thankfully due to the incredible safety structures the cars have, Mick was pretty much unscathed even after the 170mph impact. Despite Hamilton being knocked out in Q1, George Russell managed to get the other Mercedes through the Q3: not sure what that says about Hamilton’s current driving. A brilliant final lap from Sergio Perez secured his first ever pole position in the sport and a clear run into turn 1 for the race.

I wasn’t able to watch the race live, but I did have timing charts available for most of it. The race itself seemed pretty uneventful: 19 starters after Schumacher’s accident on Saturday rendered Haas only able to field one runner, an early crash for Latifi, and some reliability issues hampering a few of the drivers further down the order. A highlight of the afternoon was definitely the battle between Verstappen and Leclerc at the front of the pack, and some proper, clean wheel-to-wheel racing. It was with only four laps to go that Verstappen managed to pass Leclerc and secure his first victory of the season, also putting important points on the board for him after his DNF last weekend. Hamilton managed to scrape 10th position, asking his engineer “is there even points for that position?”. I’m not sure he helps himself by pretending to sound stupid, but his team are certainly not the front runners they have been recently, and Russell’s dream move to Mercedes may soon be filled with regret..