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🇦🇺 F1 2022 R3: Disasterpiece Theatre

A weekend to forget for is slowly becoming a season of pain for Aston Martin, compounded with a costly weekend in Melbourne that saw them sink to last in the Teams' Championship.

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What’s worse, is that it doesn’t look like there is an apparent answer coming. Let’s take each driver in turn, starting with four-time world champion Sebastian Vettel. The German missed the first two races of the year with COVID-19, and then had a mechanical failure halfway through his first practice session of the year. 

Combine that with losing a power unit, a couple of fines (one for pit lane speeding and one for unauthorised scooter use (no, really), another crash in final practice and top that all off with a DNF and it has not been a happy return to 2022 for the veteran driver, who is there to provide star power, experience and the attitude of having been there before. It must be tough for Vettel, after successful years at Red Bull and losing his smile at Ferrari, to reboot his career at Aston Martin and find himself where he is now. There’s no real Aston Martin representation in the junior ranks, so if Vettel decided to leave, it would be very interesting to see who would take the spot. 

Then on the other side of the garage, there’s Lance Stroll. The Canadian endured an awful weekend too, with crashes in practice before being at fault with an incident with countryman Nicholas Latifi in qualifying, giving him a redundant three-place penalty. The early safety car meant Aston Martin fulfilled the tyre change quickly and showed some bravery and steadily moved into the points.

Then the weaving on the main straight started as he was defending against Pierre Gasly, resulting in a five-second penalty, which saw him fall through the order and finish 12th, matching his worst start to the season since his first two seasons in the sport with Williams. 

With Stroll’s previous team strategising their way to a clever point through Alex Albon, it means Aston Martin are the only team not to have scored a point yet in 2022. Since 2014, five teams have finished a season with zero points. Marussia and Sauber in the first year of the turbo-hybrid era before Marussia repeated the feat the year after. Then we saw a few years where everyone got at least one point, all the way to pandemic-shortened 2020 campaign where Williams took nothing and 2021 when Haas tanked the season to focus on 2022. 

Haas pushed their development to this year and the new regulations, they've so far lived up to that promise, no longer running at the back of the grid regularly - and in Kevin Magnussen, they have a proven driver who can and has challenged for points. It looks like that team has turned the corner, and Aston Martin, last year a team in the midfield that could occasionally challenge for more, are now the sport’s floor. 

  
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In 2021, Aston Martin were fighting for fifth, falling away a little and finishing seventh, but the teams around them then were all the A's - Alpine and Alpha Tauri above them and Alfa Romeo below. Alpine, were it not for some really bad luck, could have been looking at a top-five finish for Alonso, but have still taken points in every race. Likewise Alpha Tauri, who have mopped up late points in all three Grands Prix so far this season, while Alfa Romeo have already exceeded their 2021 points total behind Valtteri Bottas and Guanyu Zhou.

The new rules have made this sport more competitive, more exciting and more willing to accommodate teams that want to innovate and take a bigger risk. That has also introduced extra jeopardy into the process, with the penalties for getting it wrong being amplified too.

With the number of crashes they’ve had this season, there is a large repair bill waiting for the Silverstone-based team when they return home, as well as already handing a three-race head start to their rivals. While this isn’t a written-off season for them yet, and the aim is to contend on a long-term basis, a season of pain in the Constructors’ Championship gives you less money to build upon the foundations already put together. This team are in the basement, but they have all the tools to fight upwards. 

Imola is next up, as Charles Leclerc takes a 34-point lead into the first of two Italian races this year. It’s also the first sprint of the season, and the new 2022 cars will really get to show off how closely they can race together. George Russell is second in the Championship, but the Monegasque driver is legitimately in a class on his own as he takes his second win of the season. The record crowd in Australia looked like it was buzzing, so imagine what the scene will be in Imola as a resurgent Ferrari rolls into town.

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