2022 pecking order speculation

[Alex_GER]

i know, its early but i will go with the following order

Ferrari
Mclaren / Mercedes
Red Bull
Aston Martin / Alpha Tauri
Alpine / Williams
Haas / Alfa Romeo

Top 10 after Quali in Bahrain
Leclerc
Norris
Hamilton
Sainz
Russel
Verstappen
Ricciardo
Vettel
Perez
Gasly

[adrianjordan]

For all that uninformed, irrational talks of Red Bull being in title fight in 2021 has compromised their 2022 car, it just shows how it can be managed. Regardless of the performance outcome, it's impressive to see the outcome of the amount of work that has gone in to come out with so many radical pieces on the car. It's interesting if we could know how many iterations they had to run of the car from the basic concept to where it is now, which can help understnad the work effort put in.

On the other hand, Mercedes W13 seems to be a very conservative design (at least whatever is apparent till now), evolving through the existing philosophy without going for any radical, visible changes. As some people claimed, Mercedes was working on this car since 2020, it's hard to imagine where the work effort was put in and if it was all just optimizing the existing design without trying anything new on the upper body. There may still be a lot of secrets under the hood and the underbody. But that applies to RB and other teams as well. So by the looks of it, RB seems to have done more iterations to get to where they are and Mercedes has simply continued on the same road.

Unless you work for either of these teams, there is no way of knowing what either of them did in terms of iterations, or why they pursued specific aero routes.

I don't know why everyone wanks themselves silly over Newey designs so much, especially when there are interesting concepts up and down the paddock. The Alpine and Alpha Tauri look similar, the Aston has even more extreme undercuts. Just because Mercedes design looks like a continuation, doesn't mean it is slow, or that they have done less work that any other team on the grid.

People are easy to conflate bigger and more aero surfaces with faster cars and that is not always the case.

Agreed. How many constructors titles has a Newey designed car won in the modern F1 era, how many has a Mercedes won?

Newey has a history of designing winning cars, but equally has a history of designing extreme cars that have the potential to be fast, but have issues preventing them from realising that potential.

Yes, he's good, but he long since stopped being the Silver Bullet designer that people still worship him as.

[Zynerji]

For all that uninformed, irrational talks of Red Bull being in title fight in 2021 has compromised their 2022 car, it just shows how it can be managed. Regardless of the performance outcome, it's impressive to see the outcome of the amount of work that has gone in to come out with so many radical pieces on the car. It's interesting if we could know how many iterations they had to run of the car from the basic concept to where it is now, which can help understnad the work effort put in.

On the other hand, Mercedes W13 seems to be a very conservative design (at least whatever is apparent till now), evolving through the existing philosophy without going for any radical, visible changes. As some people claimed, Mercedes was working on this car since 2020, it's hard to imagine where the work effort was put in and if it was all just optimizing the existing design without trying anything new on the upper body. There may still be a lot of secrets under the hood and the underbody. But that applies to RB and other teams as well. So by the looks of it, RB seems to have done more iterations to get to where they are and Mercedes has simply continued on the same road.

Unless you work for either of these teams, there is no way of knowing what either of them did in terms of iterations, or why they pursued specific aero routes.

I don't know why everyone wanks themselves silly over Newey designs so much, especially when there are interesting concepts up and down the paddock. The Alpine and Alpha Tauri look similar, the Aston has even more extreme undercuts. Just because Mercedes design looks like a continuation, doesn't mean it is slow, or that they have done less work that any other team on the grid.

People are easy to conflate bigger and more aero surfaces with faster cars and that is not always the case.

Agreed. How many constructors titles has a Newey designed car won in the modern F1 era, how many has a Mercedes won?

Newey has a history of designing winning cars, but equally has a history of designing extreme cars that have the potential to be fast, but have issues preventing them from realising that potential.

Yes, he's good, but he long since stopped being the Silver Bullet designer that people still worship him as.

It literally took Mercedes building an engineering super-team and spending billions to knock Newey off his last Championship roll.

[JordanMugen]

At this point I am prepared to say:

Top 4 WCC group, in no particular order:
Ferrari
McLaren
Mercedes
Red Bull

Middle 4 WCC group, in no particular order:
AlphaTauri
Aston Martin
Williams
Alpine

Bottom 2 WCC group, in no particular order:
Alfa Romeo
HAAS

I may be wrong and HAAS or Alfa Romeo may have a dominant or even regularly race winning car, or even AlphaTauri, Aston Martin, Williams or Alpine may be dominant or at least regular race winners, but at this point that seems unlikely. For now, I suspect that Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes will be the regular winners -- yes I am confident enough to hope it will be a four way battle for the WCC!

Agreed. How many constructors titles has a Newey designed car won in the modern F1 era, how many has a Mercedes won?

This conveniently overlooks that Mercedes GP refused to approve the supply of customer Mercedes HPP power units to Red Bull Racing at a fair commercial rate. Is it surprising that the Red Bull cars won less when equipped with Renault power units anywhere from 40hp to 80hp down, and Honda power units anywhere from 20hp to 40hp down until 2021 when they were finally on par?

You will note, for example, the expertly-designed Barnard MP4/1 and Dernie FW12 going from race winners to off the pace when fitted with uncompetitive engines (the Cosworth that was competitive and then became uncompetitive against turbos, and the Judd which was uncompetitive compared to the prior Honda turbo respectively). Notably the FW12C immediately became considerably more competitive, largely by simply fitting a more competitive Renault engine.

Yes, he's good, but he long since stopped being the Silver Bullet designer that people still worship him as.

Ironically this overlooks that when Newey did have access to Mercedes engines, those Mercedes engines were fairly unreliable especially immediately after beryllium was banned. This was in stark contrast to the metronomic reliability of Bryne era Ferraris of the early 2000's. It seems the Mercedes were not just unreliable but also down on power in 2004 compared to Ferrari, BMW and even Honda (please correct me if I am wrong?).

Regardless, Newey has been a valuable asset to the Jaguar / Red Bull team.

[adrianjordan]

Unless you work for either of these teams, there is no way of knowing what either of them did in terms of iterations, or why they pursued specific aero routes.

I don't know why everyone wanks themselves silly over Newey designs so much, especially when there are interesting concepts up and down the paddock. The Alpine and Alpha Tauri look similar, the Aston has even more extreme undercuts. Just because Mercedes design looks like a continuation, doesn't mean it is slow, or that they have done less work that any other team on the grid.

People are easy to conflate bigger and more aero surfaces with faster cars and that is not always the case.

Agreed. How many constructors titles has a Newey designed car won in the modern F1 era, how many has a Mercedes won?

Newey has a history of designing winning cars, but equally has a history of designing extreme cars that have the potential to be fast, but have issues preventing them from realising that potential.

Yes, he's good, but he long since stopped being the Silver Bullet designer that people still worship him as.

It literally took Mercedes building an engineering super-team and spending billions to knock Newey off his last Championship roll.

And I'm sure that RBR spent £3.50 to buy Adrian the super genius a new A3 sketch pad didn't they.

My point is all the top teams, in fact all the teams, have multiple expert engineers and designers working together to create these cars. All Newey does is oversee that and set a general concept. Not an insignificant role, but to say that RBR win BECAUSE of Newey and Mercedes required a super team belittles the work of every other member of the RBR design and engineering team.

In the 90's Newey won more than anyone else. But in the modern era whoever has the best team wins more than anyone else.

[adrianjordan]

At this point I am prepared to say:

Top 4 WCC group, in no particular order:
Ferrari
McLaren
Mercedes
Red Bull

Middle 4 WCC group, in no particular order:
AlphaTauri
Aston Martin
Williams
Alpine

Bottom 2 WCC group, in no particular order:
Alfa Romeo
HAAS

I may be wrong and HAAS or Alfa Romeo may have a dominant or even regularly race winning car, or even AlphaTauri, Aston Martin, Williams or Alpine may be dominant or at least regular race winners, but at this point that seems unlikely. For now, I suspect that Ferrari, McLaren, Red Bull and Mercedes will be the regular winners -- yes I am confident enough to hope it will be a four way battle for the WCC!

Agreed. How many constructors titles has a Newey designed car won in the modern F1 era, how many has a Mercedes won?

This conveniently overlooks that Mercedes GP refused to approve the supply of customer Mercedes HPP power units to Red Bull Racing at a fair commercial rate. Is it surprising that the Red Bull cars won less when equipped with Renault power units anywhere from 40hp to 80hp down, and Honda power units anywhere from 20hp to 40hp down until 2021 when they were finally on par?

You will note, for example, the expertly-designed Barnard MP4/1 and Dernie FW12 going from race winners to off the pace when fitted with uncompetitive engines (the Cosworth that was competitive and then became uncompetitive against turbos, and the Judd which was uncompetitive compared to the prior Honda turbo respectively). Notably the FW12C immediately became considerably more competitive, largely by simply fitting a more competitive Renault engine.

Yes, he's good, but he long since stopped being the Silver Bullet designer that people still worship him as.

Ironically this overlooks that when Newey did have access to Mercedes engines, those Mercedes engines were fairly unreliable especially immediately after beryllium was banned. This was in stark contrast to the metronomic reliability of Bryne era Ferraris of the early 2000's. It seems the Mercedes were not just unreliable but also down on power in 2004 compared to Ferrari, BMW and even Honda (please correct me if I am wrong?).

Regardless, Newey has been a valuable asset to the Jaguar / Red Bull team.

The Merc engine stopped having reliability problems long ago. As for Merc not allowing Red Bull to have their PU, can you blame them? RBR were their main rival but more so have a reputation for blaming any failure on their suppliers rather than admitting they didn't do a good enough job. (At least Horner and Mark anyway). Red Bull were free to approach Ferrari but didn't. They were free to design and build their own PU, but didn't.

I'm not saying Newry isn't a top designer, he is, but some people seem to worship him as infallible, when he has a history of making mistakes or overengineering things. But more importantly, the RB16B wasn't a race winner just because of Newey, but because of every single member of that design and engineering team.

[fourmula1]

It literally took Mercedes building an engineering super-team and spending billions to knock Newey off his last Championship roll.

Wouldn't you attribute that to a rule change/new generation of car in 2014? They were quite a ways behind in 2014. And then arguably needed the floor rule change to mount a real challenge in 2021.

It's all up for grabs with this new generation. Exciting.

[AeroDynamic]

Mercedes learned how to build a much faster car by 2013. They just had other issues around tyres in the race to solve? When more Aero people like Mike Elliot joined they seemed to improve quickly.

[Jambier]

At this point I am prepared to say:

Top 4 WCC group, in no particular order:
Ferrari
McLaren
Mercedes
Red Bull

Middle 4 WCC group, in no particular order:
AlphaTauri
Aston Martin
Williams
Alpine

Bottom 2 WCC group, in no particular order:
Alfa Romeo
HAAS

Totally agree with that.
And very sad as an Alpine fan… it was THE year to deliver after all those past years of work.

Let’s wait for the first race to be sure

[SmallSoldier]

Unless you work for either of these teams, there is no way of knowing what either of them did in terms of iterations, or why they pursued specific aero routes.

I don't know why everyone wanks themselves silly over Newey designs so much, especially when there are interesting concepts up and down the paddock. The Alpine and Alpha Tauri look similar, the Aston has even more extreme undercuts. Just because Mercedes design looks like a continuation, doesn't mean it is slow, or that they have done less work that any other team on the grid.

People are easy to conflate bigger and more aero surfaces with faster cars and that is not always the case.

Agreed. How many constructors titles has a Newey designed car won in the modern F1 era, how many has a Mercedes won?

Newey has a history of designing winning cars, but equally has a history of designing extreme cars that have the potential to be fast, but have issues preventing them from realising that potential.

Yes, he's good, but he long since stopped being the Silver Bullet designer that people still worship him as.

It literally took Mercedes building an engineering super-team and spending billions to knock Newey off his last Championship roll.

So there was no one else at Red Bull beyond Newey? … Come on, RBR had a very similar size budget and team of designers / engineers as Mercedes for most if not all of the Hybrid era (bar engine department)

[dren]

This is from my insider source:

RBR
AT
Mclaren
AM
Mercedes
Williams
Alpine
Haas
Alfa
Ferrari

[Spoutnik]

Might help to speculate !

[Spoutnik]

This is from my insider source:

RBR
AT
Mclaren
AM
Mercedes
Williams
Alpine
Haas
Alfa
Ferrari

Ferrari last ??

[santos]

This is from my insider source:

RBR
AT
Mclaren
AM
Mercedes
Williams
Alpine
Haas
Alfa
Ferrari

insider?? where? on the pub after 4 botles of wine?

[NicoS]

This is from my insider source:

RBR
AT
Mclaren
AM
Mercedes
Williams
Alpine
Haas
Alfa
Ferrari

insider?? where? on the pub after 4 botles of wine?

looks more like after six bottles. Ferrari will be second