Does the Bahrain GP signal a classic season of Formula One ahead?

Ferrari hasn't won an F1 championship for fifteen years and other than Hamilton’s first win with McLaren in 2008 and Brawn's in 2009, no team other than Red Bull or Mercedes has won it since. The sport was ready for a shake up and we might be about to get just that with a three-way fight for the title, but it wasn’t just Ferrari that raised eyebrows in Bahrain. Up and down the pit lane, nearly all the teams surprised with their performance, and not always for the right reasons. Consider the form book well and truly ripped up.

AlphaTauri and Alpine were once again solid midfield runners and Alex Albon appears to have continued George Russell’s role in flattering a Williams that in any other hands seems to belong towards the back of the grid. But those three teams aside, everyone else will have left Bahrain either high-fiving or scratching their heads.

It’s nearly three years since Ferrari last looked like genuine contenders, when they won three races on the trot in Belgium, Italy and Singapore, but based on Bahrain they appear to have the quickest car out there once again. Leclerc was in the top two in every session and went on to take pole, fastest lap and the win with his team mate Carlos Sainz right behind him. Only Red Bull looked to be vaguely in touch all weekend but they surprised for very different reasons. Red Bulls are usually bullet proof and last year they had just one mechanical failure in 22 races (Perez in Abu Dhabi). They’ve already had two in 2022 which wasn’t a great start, but with Max Verstappen just a tenth of a second off Leclerc's pole time, clearly the car is quick.

Meanwhile, Mercedes has a bit of a reputation for sandbagging and playing down their performance in pre-season testing, before going on to blow everyone away. This year Lewis pretty much admitted this past tactic when he said: "We’re not bluffing like before….umm, like people assumed we were". It turns out he was right. Having won eight constructors' titles on the bounce, the 2022 Mercedes doesn’t yet look like a championship-winning car, being about a second off the leading qualifying and race pace. That said, they’ll be pleased with a slightly fortuitous 3-4 finish and don’t bet against them sorting the car pretty quickly.

Things were much worse at McLaren though. Last year Daniel Ricciardo won in Italy and Lando Norris almost did the same in Russia but 14th and 15th of the 17 finishers in Bahrain will have brought them down to earth with a bump and clearly they have work to do. It was all smiles over at Alfa Romeo however. Valtteri Bottas must have had a chuckle to himself when he lined up alongside Lewis on the grid in 6th place and three places ahead of George Russell. He went on to finish sixth with Zhou Guanyu also in the points on his debut. They scored a total of 13 points in the 2021 season and in 2022 they already have nine.

Sebastian Vettel having to sit the race weekend out due to Covid won’t have helped Aston Martin but regardless, they looked pretty hopeless all weekend. 17th and 19th on the grid and 12th and 17th of the 17 finishers just about sums it up. Last year Lawrence Stroll was talking about challenging for world championships, but based on this past weekend that might still be some way off.

Perhaps the biggest surprise of the weekend however was the ‘white Ferrari’. A couple of weeks ago we were wondering if Haas would have the funds to continue in F1 at all, having parted ways with Nikita Mazepin and his father’s millions. Last year’s Haas was comfortably the slowest car on the grid and they were the only team that failed to win a single point all season, so for Kevin Magnussen to qualify 7th and finish the race in 5th was nothing short of remarkable. Haas might be missing Mazepin’s cash but there won't be many in the team who regret changing their driver line up.

The new regulations introduced for 2022 have given Formula 1 a much-needed reset and will no doubt deliver further surprises throughout the season. They also seem to have done their job in allowing cars to follow much more closely than before and we saw Verstappen and Leclerc take full advantage of this with their brilliant scrap for the lead at around one-third distance in Bahrain.

With more great racing and the possibility of different faces appearing on the podium, 2022 should be a cracker.