'No competition in F1 2022 title race, so why is picking highlights so hard?'

Still, it’s my column so I get to vent here. I won’t too much though. Instead, I’ll reflect on the fact that Brazil didn’t make it into the final shortlist but was still a highlight when there was far less riding on the race outcome at that point of the season is a sign of encouragement in my book.

The first year of new regulations so rarely provides a close field. It tends to be the starting point at which the competitive order is at its most stretched and the following seasons see a convergence as long as there is stability in the rules.

Even in a cost cap era that should be viewed as the case because the scale of this year’s regulation change was just so immense, to have a field spread of just 1.3 seconds from fastest to slowest across all 20 cars in Q1 in Abu Dhabi is pretty remarkable. All ten teams scored points inside the first four races, and all could boast multiple top-ten results.

It’s a great starting point for a more competitive field, especially so when you take into account the fact that those at the bottom of the standings get more car development time than those at the top, and all teams are enjoying improved financial performance fuelled by growing interest in the sport and the financial regulations.

Now, I might be unhappy about the race of the year shortlist, but in fairness none of the categories were simple to populate.

Take ‘Driver of the Year’ for example. You can look down the majority of the grid and find standout performances across the field. The frontrunners are more obvious, but if we look at Haas then alongside Magnussen’s epic pole and brilliant opening few races was the pair of top tens from Mick Schumacher mid-season that made him look every bit a match for his team-mate.

Or the Williams drivers, with Alex Albon somehow taking a set of tyres almost the entire distance in Australia, while Nicholas Latifi then stuck his hand up to be retained with an excellent performance at Silverstone.

Valtteri Bottas’s renaissance at Alfa Romeo, Esteban Ocon’s faultless drive to fourth in Japan, Pierre Gasly’s top five in Baku, Sebastian Vettel’s epic fight back through the field in the United States, the list goes on.

Not everyone hit those highs regularly of course – for some they were very much the exception rather than the norm – but they all contributed to the majority of races being far from boring.

I was deliberately trying to avoid those on the ‘Driver of the Year’ shortlist but I do have to mention Lando Norris as the only driver from outside the top three teams to score a podium this year. If nothing else to emphasise just how rare it was for a completely mixed up race.

But there’s one team that was central to all of that, and it’s Ferrari. In the past two seasons, it hasn’t been a factor at the front. Ferrari has been a midfield team, fighting with McLaren for third last year and obviously so much further off the pace in 2020. When there are only two teams leading the way then there are naturally so many more opportunities for podiums for the rest.

And sure, you might have looked at the ‘Team of the Year’ shortlist and wondered how a team that started the season with the fastest car, took the most pole positions but failed to fulfill its potential and ended up seeing its team principal leave can end up on there. But Ferrari’s step forward from a year ago was mightily impressive, and it did have races where it legitimately looked like the strongest outfit.

Mercedes, by contrast, had the opposite situation to Ferrari where the car was nowhere for much of the season but the execution of races was hugely impressive to keep it in the fight for second in the constructors’ championship as long as it did.

Even Alpine, with all of the criticism that rightly came its way for some of its handling of off-track issues – an aspect that seems far from resolved heading into the winter – can boast an excellent engineering and race team that delivered clearly the fourth fastest car and regularly delivered on it when reliability allowed.

Of the disappointments, I can only really look at AlphaTauri as a team that struggled to show something to be impressed by. Haas and Alfa Romeo were excellent early on and showed flashes late in the year too, while Aston Martin’s recovery after an awful start was a sign of a brighter future, and 10th-placed Williams scored with greater regularity than last year despite a tough car to set-up.

I know 2022 didn’t have the drama or unpredictability of last season, nor a fight that went to the wire, but then so few years have been as epic as that one. And as we reflect on the past campaign, if this is going to be how a dominant season feels in this new era of F1, then we’re in for plenty more thrillers in the years to come.