For how car-dependent we are as a nation, the American people seem to be sorely lacking any sort of interest in motorsport outside of NASCAR, which consists solely of dozens of cars making wide left turns over the course of hours and hoping to finish first without crashing. The tragedy here lies in the fact that a much more fascinating world of motorsport receives much more attention beyond our borders. Rallying, which consists of navigating on and off-road tracks as fast as one can without pushing their machine beyond its limit, is one of my personal favorites, but regardless, it is the Formula One World Championship that has definitely reigned as the king of motorsport for some time. Taking that into consideration, we might want to ask ourselves: How’s Formula One currently going?
The race for first has actually gotten rather boring in recent years, and this season appears to be no exception. Lewis Hamilton, who dominated the sport with Mercedes in the late 2010s, appears to be struggling to regain his crown thanks to the rise of Max Verstappen and Red Bull. Verstappen won both the 2021 and 2022 Formula One Drivers’ Championships, and, in 2022, with the assistance of teammate Sergio Pérez, helped Red Bull to snatch the Constructors’ Championship, ending Mercede’s 8-year winning streak. As of April 30th, we are three Grands Prix through the season – and a Red Bull driver has won every single one of them, with Mercedes not far behind, but still so far without a victory.
For fans of historically dominant teams, such as McLaren or Scuderia Ferrari, the situation has remained relatively depressing. McLaren’s drivers, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, failed to win any points for the team or for themselves in both the Bahrain and Saudi Arabia Grands Prix. McLaren in particular has appeared to suffer from a myriad of internal issues for these first few months, including a car with subpar performance and conflicts in inner management. It came as a relief to their fans when they announced a major restructuring of its technical leadership after the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which possibly helped both Norris and Piastri to score their first points of the season in the Australian Grand Prix back in April. Norris has also denied that the team is in any sort of crisis, and many regard Piastri as having lots of potential in Formula One thanks to his successes in other divisions of formula racing. For now, however, McLaren remains near the back of the pack. Ferrari, for their part, do not appear to be doing much better, as they have consistently found themselves to be in the middle or the back of the pack for the entirety of the season so far, with driver Charles Leclerc failing to finish in two of the three Grands Prix that have been held.
As we await the results of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, scheduled to be held later this month, the outcome of this year’s Formula One season appears to be quite predictable: another Driver’s win for Max Verstappen, and another Constructor’s win for Red Bull. After years of dominance by Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes, it is certainly interesting to see a new hotshot come and shake the entire sport up, although many viewers of Formula One such as myself seem to believe that Verstappen is just too good.
