Aston Martin’s Awful 2022 F1 Season

Shaken and Stirred – Aston Martin’s Awful 2022 F1 Season

I think it’s fair to say that from the word go this year, Aston Martin have been having a torrid time of things. Three Grand Prix into the year and the British outfit are the only team on the grid not to have scored a single point. In a turn of fortunes that nobody would want, they seem to emulating the Haas team of 2021.

If that is the pattern that they’re following for 2022, then it’s going to be an incredibly long and difficult year for the team with potentially massive ramifications. So what has happened to the team and how have they fallen so far?

Let’s take a look at the drivers individually and then the team as a whole.

Nico Hulkenberg

Having been dropped into an F1 car for the first time since 2020, expectations were relatively low for the Hulk’s return. Despite this though, he outqualified Stroll Jr. first time out in Bahrain to line up in 18th on the grid.

By the end of the race, he’d ultimately only made it up one position to 17th but given Lance’s troubles with the car as we’ll see later as well as Vettel’s troubles in Australia, this may be more down to the car than the driver.

Think the McLaren of yesteryear where Alonso had to fight tooth and nail just to get it into Q2.

In Saudi Arabia – where he was deputising once again for a Covid ridden Vettel – he qualified in P17 before coming home in an impressive 12th place. Not bad for an old dog.

Sebastian Vettel

Vettel coincided his 2022 debut with the spiritual start of the F1 season in Australia. Unfortunately for the four-time World Champion, the weekend overall was incredibly dire. Two retirements in the practice sessions alone were only brightened by the social media explosion of Vettel driving around Albert Park on a scooter and receiving a 5K fine for the privilege.

In Qualifying, P17 was the best Vettel could muster before his car once again gave up on him during the Grand Prix, giving Sebastian his first (and probably not last) DNF of the season.

“We are continuing to search for solutions.” – Sebastian Vettel

Needless to say, it’s not the start to the year that Vettel would have wanted – either the Covid diagnosis or the DNF.

Lance Stroll

Now we come to one of the real cruxes of Aston Martin’s problems. Somehow entering his sixth season in Formula 1 this year, I’m going to say that the Canadian has outstayed his welcome. Qualifying in P19 behind Hulk in Bahrain shows that while there are indeed problems with the car, a driver with less recent experience can still out perform you.

A 12th place result is better but still remains his best of the 2022 season. Saudi Arabia didn’t fare much better with Lance as he qualified in P15 and finished in P13. Arguably he would have finished higher were it not her his entanglements with Albon towards the end of the Grand Prix.

Then we arrive in Melbourne. Like Vettel, Stroll crashed out of practice. He then decided to keep the unnecessary battle with Williams alive by driving into the side of fellow Canadian Nicholas Latifi during qualifying, taking them both out of the equation.

As anyone who has seen the footage of the crash can tell, Lance appears to have forgotten about the simple common-sense act of checking your wing mirrors (check out Alonso’s on-board helmet camera from the race to see how it’s done if you’re unsure).

Such a simple and rookie (although I even hesitate to say that because rookies in F3 know to check their mirrors) mistake is not something you’d expect from a driver in his sixth F1 season.

Combine that with his constant weaving throughout the race to keep others behind him – for which he received a fully deserved five second penalty – and you really begin to wonder how he’s still in F1.

Now I know what you’re going to say – and it’s true, Lance isn’t always terrible in the car.

Pole in Turkey in 2020 and a podium in Baku quite some time ago come to mind. But let’s not forget that Pastor Maldonado also won the Spanish Grand Prix in 2012 and you don’t hear many people raving about what a brilliant driver he is. Sorry Pastor.

If it wasn’t for Stroll Sr’s money, Lance would have been booted from F1 a while ago and replaced with someone easily more talented. Like Nyck de Vries or that nice chap Oscar Piastri.

Aston Martin – Will they die another day?

Before the season even began, suppose Aston Martin F1 loyalist Otmar Szafnauer abandoned ship for Alpine in what seems to have been a very wise move. Moreover, if stories and reports from the F1 Paddock are to be believed then it would appear the Laurence Stroll is getting hands on with the team back at base in all the wrong ways and hindering progress in the right direction.

With the huge sums of money being sunk into this F1 venture and a supposed game plan of when Aston Martin are meant to be able to start fighting for Championships, you’ve got to look at them at the moment and wonder what exactly the money is being spent on.

Since Aston Martin’s takeover of Racing Point, they’ve steadily got worse and worse. 2022 looks set to be their worst yet.

Vettel joined the team with the promise of potential and the possibility of winning a fifth World Championship after he failed to do so at Ferrari. If the current state of play remains at Aston Martin, Vettel might just leave too, come the end of the season and retire from F1 for good.

Nobody wants to be driving around at the back of the grid of DNFing all the time – especially not multiple World Champions.

Sadly, I don’t have a magical solution for Aston Martin’s woes. But changes need to be made – and Lance Stroll not being one of their drivers is one of them.

For a team bearing the name and values of a British icon, it’s depressing to see them languishing so far behind, particularly for all the hard-working people behind the scenes, e.g. the mechanics in Melbourne working their butts off to repair the cars over and over for little to no reward come race day.

Can Aston Martin become the new Haas of 2022? I hope so because that would be rather lovely. But I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

Author: Thiemo Albers-Daly