Summary of the first third of the F1 season: Mercedes’ mistakes, the fight for the constructors and the championship

The first seven races of this year’s Formula 1 season are over and whoever expected a boring year was sorely mistaken. Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton face off in a great battle for the title, as do the entire Red Bull and Mercedes teams that the drivers drive for. But the battle is elsewhere. And it’s often off the racetrack.

But first, let’s take a look at what’s happened so far in the queen of motorsport. In the very first race of the season, the spectators got the dramatic effect they wanted in a thrilling race. Max Verstappen overtook Lewis Hamilton on the penultimate lap, but had to reverse his position due to track limits and the Briton eventually won.

The second race already brought a victory for Red Bull and Max Verstappen, making the two drivers virtually even. In the following chapters that this season wrote in Portugal and Spain, it was mainly Mercedes’ great strategy that won the day. Hamilton went into the fifth race, held in Monaco, with a nice lead.

But it was on the streets of the Principality of Monaco that he lost it. The Red Bulls were pedalling on the streets of the city and in Baku, where Verstappen was to take his second win in a row. However, he lost it with five laps to go and if it hadn’t been for Hamilton’s mistake on the restart, he wouldn’t have been top of the points for too long.

The last race was the perfect revenge for Red Bull in Spain, as a second pit stop for a softer set of tyres gave Max Verstappen the win. This means Verstappen currently leads the championship by 12 points over Lewis Hamilton, with Sergio Perez third, who has already won one Grand Prix for Red Bull and is the teammate RB needed for the first time in a long time.

Not only the two drivers, but also team bosses Chistian Horner of Red Bull and Toto Wolff of Mercedes are constantly teasing each other, accusing each other and so on. The main topic was the downforce wings, which by their flexibility slightly circumvented the rules. In the end, it only ended up with stricter tests for the rear wings, which are typical of Red Bull. The war outside the monoposts will definitely continue.

But Formula 1 is definitely not just about Hamilton x Verstappen this year. Third place in the Constructors’ Cup is currently the main target for Ferrari and McLaren. The Maranello team has a problem with race pace, which was particularly evident last time out in France, where both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz finished outside the points.

So far this year, Lando Norris has shone in the orange McLaren monocoque, scoring points in every race he has driven. His teammate Daniel Ricciardo is still getting to grips with the car, but he has already managed to score valuable points. So far, McLaren is third with 110 points, with Ferrari 16 points behind in fourth.

In fifth place, surprisingly enough, is the Alpha Tauri team, for which Pierre Gasly is on a rampage. However, even the second Italian team in the field has to defend itself against the pressure of its rivals. Aston Martin, which is sixth by only 5 points, is slowly starting to pick itself up and could bite over the next 16 races. Still in contention by a slight margin is Alpine, which is doing a bit of a swing.

The last three places are, as expected, Alfa Romeo, who scored one point each at Monaco and Baku, and Williams and Haas, who are quite predictably without points. Similarly, the driver pairings in both teams (Russell and Latifi in Williams and Mazepin and Schumacher in Haas) are the only drivers without points in this year’s championship.

How things will look after the next third of the season is now up in the air. But if this third, consisting of eight races, is as attractive as the first one, we have a lot to look forward to.

Source