How is the Bahrain Grand Prix in Formula 1 2022 season so far? (Spoilers!)

Dear motorsport fans

Well, it's the end of the first race of the season and I would like to see you guys share your thoughts.

My thoughts:

It's a pretty good race so far that Charles Leclerc has taken the checkered flag and his teammate (Carlos Sainz) finished in 2nd place. Unfortunately, Max Verstappen, Sergio Perez & Pierre Gasly's Honda-engine powered cars had problems, causing them to go DNF, meanwhile, Lewis Hamilton started in 5th place and made it to 3rd place, well done! I believe Ferrari may have the potential to become the constructors champion and I'm going to stay tuned for the next races as the season progresses.

I think there may be a first race bias coming into play with a lot of people. Other than the 3 lap battle between Verstappen and Leclerc, it wasn't a terribly exciting race. I also worry that for all the talk about cars being more racey this year, the running order before the Red Bulls exploded looked an awful lot like the starting grid, even though Bahrain is usually one of the tracks where overtaking is possible.

Verstappen and Hamilton also ran into tire issues after trying to follow closely for multiple laps. With the tires degrading, a less impactful DRS, and heavier cars, I worry there will be a lot of processional races again this year.

This new season reminds me when of they first went back to the V6 with turbos. There was a lot of early speculation and then the next few years were hard development years for every team on the grid. This feels very similar where yes, on paper everything seems great, but there's a lot to improve on. It seems like they take eons to catch up to the car in front of them and then once they do, they don't have a whole lot of options of how to keep ahead. Red Bull - Honda has some pretty serious reliability issues as well. That must really suck for them after coming from such a high last year.

It also worries me that Ferrari is probably going to be the 1 dominant team this year. I think Charles Leclerc or Carlos Sainz deserve it. They've always been speculated to be championship material and they have the team/car for it this year. But having a sole dominating team makes for a pretty boring season if they pull away from the rest of the pack while everyone tries to troubleshoot their issues.

There's a whole season left and I'm sure the cars are only going to get better with time. I just hope the rest of the teams are able to do it so we can get some more exciting racing. Those 3 laps with Leclerc and Verstappen were the most exciting out of the whole race. Even then, Charles admitted to slowing on the straight, so he had a chance to recharge his battery to come out of the next corners faster and ahead of Verstappen. It's kind of mind boggling to me that Max let Charles do this multiple times to him at the risk of his tires/brakes for no real position gain and so early in the race. That dude has issues about being second place.

@whitestripes09: I wouldn't count Mercedes out yet. They're not that far behind. They were behind Ferarri in 2019 and Red Bull last year and finished the season with the best car. They also have the best driver of all time. They also have a car that's the most different than everyone else. It just depends on how long it takes for them to sort things out.

Red Bull is also plenty quick. It's way to early to say Ferrari's going to run away with it.

I'm mostly curious to see if Mercedes will somehow solve their car mid season and completely dominate. Having no pods will either be a huge gamble that pays off or it doesn't. I'm also worried that this might be a preview template for the rest of the season. Hamilton who had previously won here three times in a row qualified in 5th and technically would have finished 5th if not for the Red Bulls technical issues. Without any serious overtaking you can tell a lot of the drivers are really struggling with the new design, not to mention the many technical issues they are all contending with. Also as mentioned on the Shift F1 pod, I worry for the health of the drivers with all this serious porpoising going around. No one wants to give up speed but nearly 2 hours of serious vibration to the cranium can't be healthy and I wonder if they will start feeling it pile on mid season if they don't manage to get the ground effect under control.

Generally speaking it looks like a huge mess out the gate but there is potential for interesting racing down the road.

From a more casual fan:

1. It's nice to see someone other than Mercedes and Red Bull not only win a race, but be in a position to win the race without needing crazy good luck to do it.

2. I'll be interested to hear whatever the final root cause of Red Bull's problems was. Given that both their cars seemed to have similar problems at similar times in the race and that Gasly's car was running a Red Bull powertrain and caught fire at a similar time, I'd be worried they have some major fault in their system.

3. Happy for Kevin Magnussen. Dude got a raw deal losing his seat to that oligarch's brat, so it's a good karmic revenge to have the result he did. And Haas might not have a totally garbage car this year - not bad for a bunch of wankers. (Also, if Hass isn't calling their shop the WankerWorks, what are we even doing here?)