Before the year began, I tried to predict the championship outcome and a whole bunch of other random things. Was I right on any of them?
Way, way back in early 2022, I made some predictions about the upcoming F1 season. I tried to predict not only the champion, but the entire constructors' and drivers' championship standings. Additionally, I took a stab at trying to guess a few specific things about the season; driver moves, news, and more. How accurate was I? Well, let's take a look...
Drivers' Championship
Ranked from last to first, here's how the final championship standings played out, and where I predicted each driver would finish. Some were fairly straightforward (I'm looking at you, Williams drivers), while others were a little more surprising. All in all, pretty close, with six out of the possible 20 drivers were in the right place.
This one was pretty straightforward. With all due respect, I don't think it was very likely anyone was going to finish behind Nicholas, barring another kind of manic race like Hungary 2021 skewing the season results. I was pretty sure that wouldn't happen again, and it didn't.
19th is a pretty unjust reward for a pretty good season from Albon; it's more of a reflection of how Williams under-delivered in 2022. Hopefully next year he will be given better machinery, because he was not the 19th-best driver this season.
Zhou is the first driver out-of-place on this list, a good three places down on where I thought he'd be. The main reason for this is his bad luck at the start of the year, when the car was much more competitive. If he'd finished all the races where he should have, he could easily have finished a couple of places further up.
Yuki takes the biggest hit out of anyone on this list; owed mostly to the disappointment that was the AlphaTauri AT03. Still, some boneheaded mistakes didn't help his cause, and another season like this may not be enough to keep the seat for 2024.
Mick scored all of his points across two weekends: Great Britain and Austria. That's it. A combo of bad luck and bad driving when the car was its most competitive (the first 6 races) ultimately sealed his fate.
Lance had a lot of P9 and P10 finishes, just slowly gathering up points across the season. Probably not a year many will look in the mirror and reflect on, but hey, since when has looking in the mirror ever been Stroll's strong suit?
Like his teammate, Pierre falls victim to the uncompetitive AT03 that the team from Faenza produced this year. At least the prediction that he'd beat his teammate by three places was correct.
A very up-and-down year (started with P5, included a pole position) produced a surprisingly average championship result, but Magnussen did enough to more or less end his teammate's career, even if it wasn't some kind of legendary performance.
I thought the Aston Martin would be worse than it was, in the end. To be fair, after the first part of the season, I felt like 14th would be an overestimate, since the car was a real handful. Unlike his teammate, Seb managed a few P6 finishes, which was a pleasant surprise.
I was quite surprised to see that Ricciardo ended up where he was predicted to. Granted, I thought he'd be a bit closer to Lando, but a win is a win, no matter how it's done (unless it's the 2021 Drivers' Championship, apparently).
The gulf between Bottas and the drivers ahead is quite extreme, but finishing in the top 10 is still a good result, and better than I expected. It's a shame that the car was so poor in the middle of the season, because after the first seven or eight races, it looked like he was going to have a chance to compete with the Alpines and Norris.
If Alonso's car never broke down, then I think the predicted seventh place was definitely attainable. But then again, if cars never broke down, he almost certainly would not have been 2005 world champion over Kimi Raikkonen, so I think Alonso would accept this trade off.
What happens when you are almost as good as Fernando Alonso across the season, but your car breaks down less? You finish one spot ahead of him and one spot ahead of your predicted spot, I guess.
I thought the McLaren would be slightly worse that the Alpine. Debatably it was. I thought that Lando would be one spot ahead of Ocon. He was. But he was still better than I expected, even if Alonso could have given Lando a run for his money if the car wasn't made of papier-mâché.
Depending on how you look at it, Hamilton had the most disappointing season compared to expectations, since he was 100% lower in the standings than I predicted. That's a bit harsh, but no matter how you slice it, 2022 was NOT a good season for Lewis. Sure, the first half of the year may have been full of "experiments" and such, but that doesn't explain the second half, where he was not really that much, if at all, better than his teammate.
I thought Carlos would be the worst of the "big three" teams' drivers, which might have been harsh. I'd probably make the same prediction for 2023, though, since he doesn't seem to have gelled with the F1-75 in the way his teammate did. Didn't have any luck on lap 1, though, which might have prevented him from beating George.
Looking at his season overall, with no context, fourth place wasn't too bad. It's where I thought he'd be. But the W13 was a lot worse than expected, so this fourth place (including a pole and a win) was made a lot more impressive when you add that context back in.
Checo, like Sainz, did not come into 2022 with a huge vote of confidence from me. While there were some definite highlights (Singapore, most notably), you can't help but feel like he should have beaten Leclerc to second in the standings given how good the RB18 ended up being.
Many people felt like this could be the year for Ferrari and Charles Leclerc. I'd love to say I saw right through it from the start, but in reality, I have to admit I thought it'd be a lot closer than this. Most of the blame can be laid on the team's shoulders, though.
From the last day of pre-season testing, I felt like another Verstappen title was inevitable. I thought we'd see a fight, even if it's not like 2021, that was pretty close. But we actually saw one of the most dominant seasons in the sport's history, so there's that.
Constructors' Championship
Much like the drivers, I tried to make an educated guess as to the teams' standings. But more than just predicting the places, I took a stab at trying to summarize each team's season... before it had even begun. How accurate were these predictions? Some of them were pretty accurate...
Overall Predictions
All teams will score points.
Yes, yes, they did. Which hadn't happened for three years, so it wasn't a complete gimme.
The competitive spread will be much closer.
No, not really. The gap between first and last was not that different to 2021.
What I predicted:
"The team will close the gap to the front in terms of lap time, but they will really miss talisman George Russell to pull out the miraculous qualifying performances that the team had last year. I think the team might have moved forward, but those around them have moved forward even more."
Reflection:
They didn't really close the gap to the front, but Alex Albon proved a decent replacement for Russell. I'd say that's a net zero for Williams, even if it was two wrongs on my side.
What I predicted:
"...The car looks solid if unspectacular, and I think P6/10 is fairly representative of "solid but unspectacular." I don't think the ceiling of the car is as high relative to the front runners as last year (when Gasly regularly qualified in the top six), but the relative improvement of Tsunoda will mean that the team finishes in the same position as last year."
Reflection:
This team was the biggest disappointment for me, and if I took out the word "solid" from the description above, it'd be pretty accurate. Oh, and you can scrub the part about P6, as well. Whoops.
What I said:
"This one kind of pains me, because I really think the team has potential to come out of the blocks as the fifth best team, but I think they will slip back as the season goes on. The team has never really been superb at in-season development and operationally they have been too inconsistent to be trusted, especially under pressure. I hope I'm wrong here."
Reflection:
Unfortunately, I wasn't wrong here. If AlphaTauri was any better, then this would have been bang on.
What I said:
"The green team will have what can best be described as an "uncomfortable" season in 2022. The car might be serviceable enough to pull out the odd good result, but generally I do not foresee a great leap up the order this year. Seb Vettel may well become disillusioned enough with the midfield life that he calls it quits on F1, and while Lance Stroll is good enough to not hold the team back, you'd have to admit he's not exactly Verstappen or Hamilton, either."
Reflection:
Uncomfortable? Check. Not a leap forward? Check. Odd good result? Check. Vettel retirement? Check. Once again AlphaTauri is really cramping my style, otherwise Aston would probably have even finished eighth for the full sweep.
What I said:
"The Swiss-Italian Sauber-run Alfa Romeo team (there's a mouthful) will take the mantle of this year's most improved team. I think the car could easily be sixth quickest or better, but as we saw in 2021, Alfa Romeo is not exactly the gold standard of execution when it comes to reliability and strategy. Bottas will outperform Zhou, although I don't think we will see a Gasly-Tsunoda-2021-type demolition job, more like Ricciardo and Norris in 2021."
Reflection:
In terms of standings, they were the most improved team (ninth to sixth), and the car was not exactly bulletproof. The points will have you believe Bottas destroyed Zhou like Gasly did to Tsunoda in 2021, but in terms of actual performance I'd say the Norris-Ricciardo comparison was more fair.
What I said:
"What started off looking like a possible title outsider rapidly deteriorated into a borderline shambolic performance in the Bahrain test. I think that the reality is somewhere in between. The top "customer" team, McLaren will probably perform about as well as they did last year relative to the rest of the field, but I think that one again it will be a Lando Norris show. Daniel Ricciardo talked endlessly about the impact of only having three days of testing last year, and how that contributed to his struggles. Well, this year he's in the same boat, but his teammate and the rest of the grid (except Kevin Magnussen) are not. Far from ideal."
Reflection:
It kind of was the Lando Norris show again, although I don't think the car was quite as good as last year's. If anything, these remarks underscore the uselessness of the Barcelona testing session when it comes to competitiveness.
What I said:
"Do I believe in 'El Plan' as many people do? No, not really. But, the team has been more or less handicapped by running what is effectively the 2019 chassis for three years, and had an engine that is probably 30hp down on the leaders. It's a new year, new engine, and new car, so the fruit should be hanging lower for Alpine than for some others. If the car is average, the driver pairing is far above that, and I wouldn't be surprised to see a tight battle between Alpine and McLaren waging for most of the year."
Reflection:
Not even Alonso believed in El Plan in the end. But Alpine's balanced driver pairing did ultimately make the difference over McLaren this year, so at least they had that going for them. Pretty close, to be honest.
What I said:
"I think that Mercedes will have the opposite arc to Ferrari, as they may stumble out of the blocks and even have to watch their backs in the first couple of races while they sort out any problems with the W13. However, I think the team will be back in full swing by midseason and will end the year in a similar fashion to last year, although it might just be a little too late to overcome the first team..."
Reflection:
Well, they had a very slow start to the year. They never quite made it back to full swing as I thought they would, but they did win a race and were generally closer to the front at the end of the year compared to where they started it.
What I said:
"I think that the top three teams will be exceptionally close, but will have different paths to their ultimate championship position. I think Ferrari will start the year really strong, and challenge for wins especially in the first half of the season. For many years, not just in 2017 and 2018 as has been highlighted, Ferrari has failed to sustain a title challenge through effective car development, and this year may just fall the same way. Sorry, tifosi..."
Reflection:
I could write this for Ferrari for any year, to be honest. The top three teams were never that close; it was more of a case of Ferrari vs. Red Bull for the first half of the year with Mercedes behind, and then Red Bull clear while Ferrari fought Mercedes in the second half. But they bungled a good start, just as I had feared, and as they have done before.
What I said:
"Last year's runner-up team will go one better this year, as a combination of Ferrari's mid-season decline and Mercedes' slow start mean that Red Bull will be able to accumulate enough points to walk away as champions even if their car isn't always the fastest on a given weekend. If Sergio Pérez can be as close to Max as he was in Baku, Austin, Mexico, and Abu Dhabi [2021], then I would expect that the team's fortunes will greatly benefit, as we know how hard it can be to get around him on the track..."
Reflection:
On a macro scale, this is nearly 100% accurate: Ferrari's mid-season collapse in combination with Mercedes' slow start meant that they did walk away with the title. Pérez could have been closer, though.
"Realistic" Predictions
I'm not sure what qualified these predictions as "realistic" when I wrote them, but whatever those qualifications are, they definitely don't apply now.
Either Vettel or Alonso will retire at the end of this year.
Result: TRUE
Sebastian Vettel finally got tired of running in the midfield, and called time on his career. (For now, at least). Would have been much more impressive if I predicted that Alonso would replace him.
Lando Norris will win his first race this year.
Result: FALSE
I don't know what I was thinking. I guess I figured that McLaren would do as good or better than last year, which did not happen. He did get the only podium for a non-top 3 team. If only that was the prediction.
Andretti's F1 team will be announced in the first half of the year.
Result: FALSE
The fact that I thought this was realistic and not "bold" says a lot about the disconnect between what I think and what the higher-ups at F1 and Liberty Media think.
"Bold" Predictions
What makes these bolder than the last ones? I don't know.
Haas will have at least one double-Q3 appearance.
Result: TRUE
In fact, it happened more than once! The first time was in Canada, but it happened again in Austria as well. Would have been much more prophetic if I had said that Haas would snag a pole position instead. For what it's worth, I'm pretty sure the only team not to have a double-Q3 appearance was Williams.
Yuki Tsunoda will beat Pierre Gasly in the qualifying head-to-head.
Result: FALSE
Last year Pierre beat Yuki 21-1 across the season, so to expect a complete turnaround was a bit ambitious. It was a lot closer, to be fair, although still in Pierre's favor.
Williams will be the only team without a podium.
Result: FALSE
Ha! Man, I was really optimistic about these new regulations. Well, it would have been a pretty epic season if this had come true.
The Ferrari bromance will end in tears.
Result: FALSE
I felt like after the animosity of the Vettel and Leclerc season, plus the renewed competitiveness of the Scuderia, that there would be a good chance of there being some kind of rivalry or calamitous moment that would destroy the Leclerc-Sainz relationship. But that didn't happen. Imagine if it did? That could have made this season truly a disaster.
Red Bull, McLaren, AlphaTauri, Alfa Romeo, Williams, and Alpine will have different driver lineups in 2023.
Result: FALSE
I thought Zhou would get replaced by Theo Pourchaire at Alfa Romeo, and that Pérez would get replaced at Red Bull. Those two didn't happen, but the rest did. Plus, Haas and Aston Martin, as an added bonus.
In Summary
Correct: 13/40
Not exactly a passing grade, but it could have been worse. This was a good bit of fun, that's all. It's like writing a note to your future self in primary school and reading it when you're older. Well, maybe a bit less dramatic than that. But still. It shows that F1 isn't all that unpredictable if you really, really look closely. Here's to 2023, then!
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