2022 - Race 2 Saudi Arabia

[F1nKS]

After a successful race 1, F1 gets right back to it with race in Saudi Arabia where the winners and losers of Race 1 get to try again.

Winners

1. Leclerc/Sainz - Ferrari is back. The impressive effort all weekend reinforce the pre-season testing. Leclerc looks primed for a championship run.

2. Ferrari - no strategic errors and look like they have produced a great power unit (e.g. Haas, Alpha Romeo).

3. Haas - Magnussen finished 5th and Schumacher 11th. Guenther has to be very happy. I hope we now see Schumacher start to improve more.

4. Alpha Romeo - Bottas and Zhou in the points. Preseason they looked like they were going the other way, but they turned it around this weekend.

5. Albon/Williams - Nice drive by Albon coming off a year off. But the difference in results between Williams drivers makes it hard to judge where the team really is.

Losers

1. Mclaren - They just looked bad.

2. Williams/Latifi - is Albon that good, or is Latifi just that bad. I was really hoping Williams would make a bigger jump.

3. Red Bull - major reliability issue with their powerplant with 3 of 4 cars suffering problems. Major setback for Red Bull in any chances of being in the championship fight. Long season though...

4. Alpha Tauri - Gasly looked to deliver a good result and could have had 2 cars in the points, but the RB powerplant issue robbed them. Yuki is happy.


Meh

1. Mercedes - Give Mercedes credit for at least being in a position to pick up a podium and good points. But if their goal is to win championships - they are not in the same zip code as Ferrari at the moment. It remains to be seen how the budget cap will affect development. If they do get their car to the point where they could challenge it could be epic season.

2. Alpine - They look to be about where they were last year, maybe worse.

3. Aston Martin - nobody expected much, neither did they deliver much.