Best F1 team of the year: 2022 Season Review Awards

The Enstone outfit moved up from fifth to fourth in the World Championship, holding off a strong challenge from McLaren, and increased its points tally from 155 to 173. That might not seem like a huge leap, but remember in 2021 Esteban Ocon bagged 25 points for his opportunistic win in Hungary. There were no such gifts for the midfield teams in 2022 – indeed Alpine didn’t even log a podium. What Ocon and his team mate Fernando Alonso did do was score solid points on a consistent basis with a car that was regularly the fourth fastest on the grid and at times edged out the unloved Mercedes W13.

If there was a weakness it was the reliability of the Renault power unit. However new team boss Otmar Szafnauer was keen to point out that in the context of a development freeze it was a deliberate policy to take risks and then address the problems, with the rules allowing such mods. The departure of Alonso and the saga over Oscar Piastri hinted that the team wasn’t always as quick on its feet as it could be – often the case when there’s a manufacturer involved – but headhunting Pierre Gasly was a good move.

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Ferrari

Ferrari endured two difficult seasons in 2020 and 2021, failing even to win a race. However there were signs of recovery in the latter season, with Charles Leclerc and team newcomer Carlos Sainz sharing five podiums, and the former logging poles in Monaco and Baku.

The 2022 regulations created an opportunity, and Ferrari took it. The F1-75 was competitive from the start of the season, and while it suffered from the porpoising issue that stymied Mercedes and others, that didn’t seem to impact the overall performance.

The car was fast enough to secure 12 pole positions – nine of them for Leclerc. However they were turned into just four wins, a total that reflected both inferior race pace relative to rivals Red Bull and the strategic errors that seemed to blight the team’s season. Nevertheless it was a decent performance by the team relative to what went before, and indicated that there was some positive momentum. However, at the end of it team boss Mattia Binotto left – it remains to be seen whether his successor can take Ferrari to the next level of success.

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Mercedes

For the first eight years of the hybrid era Mercedes was the dominant force, winning the constructors’ title every season and only missing out on the drivers’ version on the very last lap of the 2021 finale.

That run of consistent success was always going to end at some stage, and it took the booby trap of the 2022 regulations to do it. With less aero testing than rivals due to earlier successes, and with 2021 fight going down to the last race, the team simply didn’t do a good enough job in preparing for the new rules.

The ‘no-sidepod’ aero package was a bold move that gave the opposition food for thought, but the car would suffer throughout the season with porpoising and bouncing issues that made life tough for the drivers. The team admitted that it had made a wrong choice in the development stages – nothing to do with the sidepods, it was stressed – and there was no way to turn the clock back, especially in an era when the cost cap reins in development.

However the team knuckled down and improved the W13, and in November George Russell won at Interlagos. It was a hugely impressive recovery.

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Red Bull

Nine years into hybrid regulations Red Bull Racing finally won the constructors’ championship in 2022. The team did it in some style, with Max Verstappen scoring 15 wins, and Sergio Perez adding two more to the tally.

The team simply did a better job than anyone else of tackling the new regulations, despite losing top aero man Dan Fallows to Aston Martin in the middle of the new car’s development. The car was competitive on all types of circuits, and while it often lost out over one lap to Ferrari – especially in the first part of the year – invariably Red Bull had the upper hand on race day, especially on tyre usage.

Reliability was a headache early on, but overall Honda, operating as a paid supplier to the team, did a great job. In the background Red Bull’s own powertrain programme for 2026 began to take shape. The new division represents a huge commitment, and was the last big strategic call made by company boss Dietrich Mateschitz before his death.

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