Formula 1 World Champion of 2022 season is.... (Spoiler alert!)

Dear motorsport fans

If you haven't watched the Formula 1 Japan Grand Prix race, I don't recommend you to read this thread unless if you want to get spoiled.

Oh, by the way, there are four more races remaining for this season.

So here are my thoughts on this season of F1 so far:

I've heard Team Scuderia Ferrari S.p.A had a good start while Honda engine powered Teams like Red Bull Racing had some mechanical failures so they went DNF in some of the races, then a couple of months later, Ferrari messed up their strategies and engineering while Charles Leclerc went DNF multiple times, resulting him to lag behind his rival: Max Verstappen, meanwhile Team Mercedes' engineering had many mistakes, resulting Lewis Hamilton to loose against Max again.

Hopefully, by 2023, Team Mercedes will catch back up by having much more improved cars while Lewis's rivals are likely going to be Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc.

I mean... I still don't understand why the Japanese GP is allowed a different interpretation of the rules regarding a partial completion. I understand the rules. It just is weird that this GP operates in a different ruleset. The season winner was a bit of a foregone conclusion. It says a lot that more people are excited about contract signings than the end of the season.

It's been an awful season, to be honest. Verstappen's not had someone snapping at his heels and he hasn't really been fighting for his overtakes like last season. That's largely down to Ferrari not getting it together and Mercedes taking big steps backward.

I'm starting to get disinterested. A 40 minute race is just the icing on the cake.

Yeah I've watched F1 for a long time and I've been feeling increasingly checked out from it this year. The competition is not great and it feels like gimmicks are taking over everything else (like that awful Miami race and all the garbage around it. It'll be even worse next year with Las Vegas). There's too many races too so it doesn't feel like an event when F1's on. I used to look forward to F1 weekends but now it's on almost every other weekend and I find myself caring less and less.

With Danny Ric and Vettel both on the way out, there's going to be even fewer interesting personalities left on the grid too. I have nothing against the newer drivers, but many of them are so strongly media trained that they seem to avoid showing personality in any way.

I mean...there's nothing to really spoil with respect to the overall leader this year. Verstappen walked away with this one essentially uncontested. Hopefully some other teams can manage to be competitive next season.

It's in no way comparable to last year, and I'm glad another clear rule blind spot these cars have opened up is queued to be addressed.

I mean it's plausible Max's engine would explode three times in a row I guess but I'm not going to be awake at night over that.

Verstappen has been boring to watch, honestly. Those Red Bull cars are just too fast once their out front, as long he placed for pole or near the front he'd sprint up and then the race would be effectively over. Singapore was at least vaguely interesting and Verstappen was really struggling there, but Perez did the "get into first and then nothing happens" so the battle for first was just settled the whole time, it's disappointing.

I don't know what Ferrari does next season to challenge, the cars are one thing but Leclerc seems to be missing something, he doesn't seem gutsy enough to me to push it. Hopefully a stronger showing from Mercedes can make things more interesting or maybe those new financial rules can nerf RB a little.

@zombiepie: To me, all Grand Prix races are better to share the same interpretation of the rules so the contestants and spectators won't get confused.

@shindig: Yeah I was expecting it to be an exciting season just like 2021, where it had a huge rivalry between Hamilton and Verstappen on the standings.

Anyway, guys, I'm also expecting Oscar Piastri to do so well as an F1 rookie by 2023, since he is the F2 champion of the 2021 season.

Well if it's true Red Bull (and Aston Martin) exceeded the budget cap while everybody else played mostly within the rules, that might explain why Red Bull's car is so damn superior.

Man, Verstappen is a hell of a driver, but, if the rumours are true with what Red Bull did with the car this year, I'm always going to have asterisks beside his two championships in my head.

@zombiepie: I'm just going with the conspiracy theory that they fudged whatever they had to to give Verstappen the title this weekend so they could celebrate in an attempt to placate Red Bull for when they take both season's titles away tomorrow for not even coming close to meeting last year's budget cap.

Any threats of Red Bull leaving F1 would be laughed at now, but it doesn't hurt to soften the blow.

They were never under threat of leaving. They're just stinging from the idea of developing their own engines.

Well, unless an appeal or a lawsuit or whatever overturns the report, we've got a "minor" overspend for Red Bull, which means anything up to 7 or so million dollars above the $145 million cap. (Man, I'd like to be somewhere that $7 million is considered "minor".)

I wonder if we could get a good enough breakdown where you can tell where the overspend is. I would think that spending extra money on wind tunnel testing or part R&D would be viewed much more negatively then overspending on spares or on building a really nice transporter.

F1 is in a hell of a spot now too -- no matter what they do, people are going to claim that it's either too lenient and the cap is a sham, or it's too harsh and it's a sign of the vendetta against Red Bull.

Sheesh.

Another thing I forgot to mention is, the World Champion award should have been handed out at the end of the final race of each season, not the end of the Japan Grand Prix (Round 18 of 22).