2022 Reject of the Year Awards

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Who is 2022's Reject of the Year?

Poll ended at 11 Jan 2023, 07:41

AlphaTauri
0
No votes
The Alpine/McLaren contract drama
6
20%
Aston Martin
0
No votes
Daniel Ricciardo
14
47%
Ferrari
5
17%
Mick Schumacher
1
3%
Nicholas Latifi
0
No votes
The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix
4
13%
 
Total votes: 30

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rachel1990
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2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by rachel1990 »

So here we are. The end of 2022. And what an exciting thrilling, incredible season we have had with the 20 best drivers.... oh who am I kidding. Its not been the thrill ride that we were promised but at least most of the races were pretty good. (Okay maybe not Mexico)

But how to rank the drivers? Well most did okay but there were a few clunkers. Let's see how I at least ranked them

1- Max Verstappen. Well, no one can argue with this title (though typical Red Bull they muddy the waters with the cost cap saga). After Australia, he said he was out of the title race. 14 wins later... And what was more impressive (comparing him to Vettel 2013) is the fact that he could win from near enough anywhere on the grid and didn't need pole position. However, as a teammate, not so good.

2- Lando Norris. God his shoulders must be exhausted after having to carry the entire McLaren team. The only driver outside the top 6 to get a podium and nearly got Mclaren 4th in the constructors. By himself. Great driver. Next year will be the acid test.

3 Charles Leclerc. Drivers leading the clowns. And the clowns took away at least a chance for fighting for a world championship. too many times Charles was stuffed over by his team and had to fight against some plain stupid calls. hards. Hungary. oh, the memories. got 3 wins but should have been so much more. got the prize for the first loser though.

4 Sergio Perez- yes had his best-ever season of f1 in the most dominant car. 11 podiums 2 wins. But there were times when Sergio went missing too and while Max didn't need any backup this season, maybe in the future Sergio should be there most often. Though after Brazil will Sergio help though (yes. of course he will)

5- George Russell. Now I had problems ranking the next 5 or so drivers. I am going to give it to George because in his first full season in a top team he did beat Hammy, got his first win, and proved he is up there with the best. However, he still needs to iron out some mistakes and I do think Hammy is a faster driver. And Hammy did a lot of Donkey work at the start of the season. But he did beat him

6- Lewis Hamiton- Hammy was not a happy chap in 2022. 0 wins. 0 poles. Beaten by his teammate despite Hammy doing a lot of Donkey work at the start of the season, Seeing Max run away with the title. No wonder Hammy never wants to see that particular Merc ever again. and yet Hammy did drive well 85% of the time and was up there the second half of the season. Unfortunately, the only race where Merc was faster than Max. George was there instead. Worst f1 season ever for Hammy (which is a shame because 2011 deserves to be his worst f1 season ever)

7 Kevin Magnussen (that surprised a few people) K-mag returned at the very last minute when Hass got rid of the Mazepins after the awful events going on in Ukraine. And proved he was on the pace straight away with an amazing result in Bahrain. Yes, the Haas was good in the first few races but still 5th place?? Haas would be 9th or even 10th if it wasn't for him and he was often the victim of some unlucky moments. Plus his result in Brazil with pole with always be in the memories- K-Mag proved his worth in f1.

8 Carlos Sainz- Got his first win. Yes, it was slightly lucky but maybe ignoring the team is the way to go. But he made too many errors at the start of the season which didn't help the team at all. Maybe had the jump on Charles by the end of the year but it was far too late then...

9 Fernando Alonso- If there was an award this year for the driver that was the most consistent then surely Fernando would be on the podium at least. So many points finishes and yet beaten by this teammate just because his car was more unreliable. I suspect Stroll won't be so much of an issue next season

10 Estaban Ocon- why does Ocon fall out with his teammates? what does he say or do to fall out with them (answer colliding with them) got some good results though and the team did get 4th- will lead the team next season and already doesn't get along with Gasly so no need to worry about that.

11- Alex Albon- Came back after missing 1 season and having a very embarrassing season the year before. And picked up where George left off- Led the team in the worst car and thrashed Latifi Good in quali and some Minor points finishes. That doesn't sound much but in that car, he did the business and rebuilt a lot of his reputation.

12 Sebastian Vettel- Unlike other 'old' champions, he went out on his terms. Had a reasonable season even though the Aston was another dog. Seb even missed the first two races and barring a very poor Australia did well and ended his career with Dignity- Are you listening Damon!!

13 Valtteri Bottas- If this was judged based on the first half of the season Bottas would be in the top 5. However, after Canada, he disappeared off the radar completely (barring one drive in Brazil) Alfa Romeo are his level. That's it really. Still beat a Merc in Imola. that would have made him feel a lot better.

14 Lance Stroll- his aging teammate got twice the points he did despite missing the first two races. Doesn't look good does it Lance. Still won't make a difference- Alonso next year will beat him as well. Shrugs. got a few good points finishes

15 Zhou Guanyu Considering he was the only full-time rookie on the grid, I don't think he was given enough credit this year. Kept it clean in most of the races and was near the top ten in most of the races. Okay, 6 points doesn't sound great but he didn't cost Alfa Romeo a fortune in repair bills either. Probably deserved a second year

16 Yuki Tsunoda- I am judging this on expectation as well- I did have trouble splitting the Alpha Tauri drivers but maybe i expected less from Yuki and that's why he was higher. But let's be fair that car was a dog this year and Yuki didn't crash as much. would have been harder to do much more in 2021 . gets a new teammate in 2023 and if Nyck thrashes him that will be it for him

17 Pierre Gasly- When they re-print the dictionary next year the word un-motivated be next to a caption of Gasly. Started well but faded very Quickly. Piastri however has saved him from the Vergne treatment and he has escaped to Alpine where his beat mate/hate enemy Ocon is waiting for him. Might be a quick drive before a ban though- Those penalty points have racked up!!

18 Mick Schumacher- yeah. Deffo Ralf's nephew. Drove like uncle Ralf at Toyota. In 2007- Seemed to wreck more cars than he got points but he did have two good races (Britain and Austria) and did show moments of potential. However he needed more and in the end, Haas had to make the call.

19 Nicholas Latifi- The good news. Points in Japan and finished 20th out of 20 drivers (nearly finished 21st out of 20)- now the honest opinion. Not good enough. Was slightly fortunate to keep his seat in 2022 and no one was under any illusion that Nicky was going at the end of 2022. Oh well.

20 Daniel Ricciardo- 37-point difference. Norris would get high points, q3 appearances, and even a podium. Dale would go out in q1, finish outside the points, and cost Mclaren 4th in the constructors. Lando got points 17 times. Dale 7. No wonder Mclaren decided to buy him out of his contract and now he is out of f1. Sorry, Daniel. the worst overall driver of the year.

Constructors

1- Red Bull- Karen's win. Oh goodie. After Australia, reliable and fast. can win from anywhere on the grid.

2- Alpine- Team management 0- but got 4th in the constructors so it's another improvement.

3- Mercedes- Did win a race but clearly a downfall from previous years. F1 needs Merc to improve. If nothing else, Ferrari have proved they can't and I doubt many fans want to see Max winning 15 races in a season again. I don't want a Hammy 2020 season but something like last season

4- Mclaren- Lando carried the team but I'm not sure what the team could do more to help Danny Ric and made the corrct choice, unlucky to come 5th.

5- Alfa Romeo- Going from 2 unmotivated drivers to 2 drivers who clearly wanted more- for the first half of the season at least

6- Haas- From 0 points to 37 and from dead last to 8th- Good improvement and a good choice for K-mag to replace well him...

7- Ferrari- won 4 races which is more than the whole of 2019,2020 and 2021 combined. However, they had the fastest car at the start of the season, and unreliability and extremely poor tactics from the pit wall cost them big time. Please let 2023 be an improvement

8 Aston Martin. Um- well they lost the pink which improved the look of the car. However, it wasn't great from them all season. Oh well they beat Alpha Tauri which is better than last year

9 Williams- It was worse than last year which doesn't sound great but they were fighting one-handed with Latifi performing very badly- Albon was a bright spark for them and Nyck de Vries proving himself was a highlight

10 Alpha Tauri-Awful. Dog of a car and at least 1 unmotivated drive led to 9th in the constructors and only beat Williams in the standings. A year to forget.

ROTY Podium

Bronze- Ferrari- I know I ranked them 7th in the Constructors standings but still, they started the year with a 1-2 and yet we finished with Red Bull winning 17 races- they made so many bad calls and unreliability was shocking as well

Silver- Nicholas Latifi- So so close to winning this award. Silly mistakes and being so slow as well made him impossible to ignore for this podium. Maybe Japan saved him from the top spot

MY ROTY- Daniel Ricciardo. For all the points mentioned above- Slow, accident prone, and cost Mclaren 4th in the constructors. Mclaren made the right call to end it early. At least he will always have Italy 2021.
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Re: Driver and Team Reviews 2022 and the ROTY podium.

Post by James1978 »

Red Bull Karens :D :D
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2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Rob Dylan »

Thank you for starting this Rachel. I am indeed going to hijack this thread and turn it into the official Reject of the Year voting place. Firstly, we should go through our nominations for the year, and this is where you forumites come in!

I want to see all your best suggestions and why below :dance:

After we have got a sizeable set of nominees and frontrunners, we'll run our end of year poll to decide officially who the ultimate Reject of 2022 is.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Butterfox »

Gosh, it's hard to ignore what a shocker of a year Daniel Ricciardo had right? Based on pre-season expectations one obviously also has to nominate Mercedes-Benzas well.

Might do a full review if i feel like it.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by FalconCapelli »

Goatifi is the King of the year, ricciardo is certainly a reject of the year
Chad Alpine is the most surprising team of this year despite big dramas, Mclaren imo is the reject team of the year
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Row Man Gross-Gene »

I broadly agree with Rachel's assessment except for 2 entries. Among the drivers, Ricciardo certainly didn't deliver, but much like last year, he's a victim of our high expectations of him. His performance was certainly the farthest off his past performances, but I'd still put him in my car above the next 4-5 people ranked above him. Ricciardo at 70% is better than Stroll at 100% in my opinion. That said, if we're grading on a curve, I can see placing him last among drivers, knowing that his actual level was still higher than many above him.

I think Ferrari's placement is probably more unfair. Take away every strategic error they made and the season results are exactly the same, i.e. Red Bull runs away with both championships and Ferrari finishes second in both championships. They lost more points to reliability than strategic mistakes. But remember that those failures were likely caused by them pushing the limits on performance in order to homologate a faster engine before the freeze occurred. So now they've locked in a more powerful engine while still having the ability to make reliability improvements under the current rules. They went from possibly the worst engine to probably the second best in one year- that alone probably warrants a ranking of 4th. They gambled big on their cheat a few years back and lost big time and now they're just getting back to where they were. Expecting them to have competed with Red Bull would have been laughable before testing. The fact that they did for even a short time was pretty miraculous. That said, they need to update their strategy thinking. They definitely need to raise the emphasis they put on being on the correct tire and lower their emphasis on track position now that cars can follow much better.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Enforcer »

I'm not gonna do a full rundown of drivers and teams cos I haven't really got the energy to go through and ponder where Zhou compares to Stroll and where they both compare to Tsunoda and Bottas. But I will run through a few drivers I thought were impressive:

Verstappen – Obviously

Norris – Obviously

Russell – On pure pace, I'd consider him the 3rd best driver after Verstappen & Norris this season. I strongly suspect both Merc drivers were outperforming their machinery and Russell was better than Hamilton, and took the only win. He did blot his record with a good few incidents though, hence me constantly seeking 10,000 race bans for him in the Discord.

Vettel – Stroll might be there because of Daddy's money, but he is usually competent behind the wheel and Vettel pretty comfortably put him away all season despite his imminent retirement. Imo, he lost out at being 'best of the rest' behind the top 3 teams a couple of times because bizarre strategy calls from AM. USA & I think Mexico where they ran long and got undercut by about 6 other drivers are examples. He never drove like a bloke who was on the verge of packing it in.

Leclerc - 2nd in the WDC despite driving for a circus act.

In terms of the teams, no one really impressed apart from Red Bull. Ferrari were a joke, Mercedes regressed vs. the last 8 years, and everyone else was mired in the midfield, even further off the top 3 teams than last year.


My ROTY podium:

Bronze: David Croft, Ted Kravitz and Jenson Button.
I appreciate that many races were unspeakably boring and did not make things easy, but Crofty and Kravitz are terrible commentators who often made an already difficult watch worse. Throw Button into the mix and it's time to deploy the mute button.

Crofty is the most delusional of delusional Hamilton fanboys. For half the season, Lewis would set a decent sector time and Croft would immediately start talking up his chances of winning, no matter how blatantly unlikely that was to everyone else. Dutch GP is the best example. Max quite clearly had that in hand with his pace and ability to just DRSROFLSTOMP anyone in his way down the straight, but Croft kept insisting Hamilton could win until about the last 10 laps. Hamilton just didn't have a race winning car most of the season, and Croft kept guzzling down copium over it.

Is Ted Kravitz actually ok? I'm not sure how a correctly functioning human comes out with:

"I am the genie to your...eh... question... lamp?" - British GP 2022.
"I'm on the edge of my seat and I'm standing up." - Canadian GP 2022.
"6 seconds and 15 eh... 15... em just over a tenth" - Trying to say "6.15 seconds" at Mexico.

Mind boggling stuff.

When Martin Brundle was around, there'd at least be one brain between three, and he'd occasionally drop some reality on Crofty. But for whatever reason, we got Jenson Button in a lot of races instead. He is boring, awkward and uncomfortable, his insider knowledge amounts to 'racing is hard' and his voice would kill a witch.

Silver: Daniel Ricciardo
Obliterated by Norris and essentially cost McLaren 4th in the WDC. Clearly he was neither comfortable in the car nor the team, routinely missed out on reaching Q2, whilst Norris rarely failed to make Q3, made loads of mistakes, and even when he didn't, had many totally anonymous events were he drove around outside the top 10 for an hour and a half without anyone noticing.

The decline has been shocking. This is a guy who could compete with Vettel & Verstappen at Red Bull, and even last season, although he was outperformed overall by Norris, he still took a race win. Yet this season, he was quite frankly, rubbish.

Gold: Ferrari
2nd in the WDC and 2nd in the WCC suggests a harsh judgment to put them as ROTY, but as the saying goes, it's about the journey not the destination. Ferrari's journey to 2nd place consisted of them starting the season looking like genuine challengers, but being in utter meme territory by the last third of the season.

A good start to the season began to unravel with a poor race at Spain where Leclerc's turbo failed whilst he led comfortably, handing Verstappen a lead in the WDC that he would never relinquish. Things got worse at Monaco with an accidental double stack in the pits that relegated Leclerc from a potential race win to 4th. The first of many clown-show strategies from the Italians. Azerbaijan was an embarrassment where both scarlet cars as well as two of their customers in the form of Magnussen and Zhou retired with mechanical issues.

Back to back wins at Britain and Austria seemed to signal that the Prancing Horse wasn't done yet, although the former was tempered by a slow reaction to a safety car leaving Leclerc to be eaten up on old tires late in the race. But the revival was short.
France was another disaster with Leclerc crashing and Sainz copping a penalty and only able to bring back 5th place. Another unfathomable strategy followed at Hungary with Leclerc switching to hard tires, which were so horrible he had to re-pit for softs and ended up finishing 6th. Belgium saw Leclerc pit for fresh softs in attempt to set fastest lap, and not only fail to achieve fast lap, but also copp a 5 second penalty for speeding in the pitlane, costing him 5th place.

By this stage Ferrari now had the additional problem that their car had become a Saturday Special. Decent in qualy, but hopelessly outclassed in race trim by Red Bull and frequently matched or outpaced by Mercedes, who started the season well behind them in terms of pace. Unsurprisingly, they didn't win another race for the remainder of the season.

In the end, from a position of challenging Red Bull for both titles, they scraped home in 2nd ahead of Mercedes and Sergio Perez, respectively. Whilst they likely would've been overhauled by Red Bull on pure pace and consistency, a series of easily avoidable mid-season blunders put them effectively out of sight well before the end of the season and almost cost them 2nd place. The self-inflicted nature of their defeat makes them my candidate for ROTY.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by James1978 »

There was one point in Abu Dhabi where David Croft actually said Michael Schumacher instead of Mick. I don't think Mick is quite as good as Michael somehow :D
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Rob Dylan »

Daniel Ricciardo obviously comes first to my mind. His bad season from last year was apparently repeated this time around, except without any of the highlights that saved him from ROTY last year. He cost his team fourth and they had to buy him out of his championship just to get rid of him. As someone else said, he went in four years from leaving Red Bull to avoid being Verstappen's number 2, and now he returns as his number 3.

Alfa Romeo were depressing to watch this year. I mentioned many times last year that their problem isn't necessarily money or pace, but just sheer poor race management and reliability. All of Zhou's best opportunities to get points were spoiled by awful reliability in the early season. Bottas even threw away points in Imola and Miami when he was having the team's best moments all season. It's depressing to watch because they are never at their full potential, even with two motivated and better drivers than last year.

Nicholas Latifi suddenly had the spotlight on him this year. The moment Mazepin was gone, everyone saw just how much he had been masking Latifi's poor pace. His teammate came back from a year out while Nicholas was in his third season at Williams, and Albon scored points while Latifi was consistently in last place and occasionally a lap behind by Sunday evening.

Mick Schumacher had a similar situation in that his teammate had been parachuted in after a year out. Yet it was Magnussen who took the lion's share of points when Haas were actually competitive. The moment Mick seemed to come alive (i.e., stop crashing and show some pace for once) it ended up being basically a one-off, and he remained entirely pointless after Austria. Replacing him with Hulkenberg says more to me about Mick than it does about Haas.

There are more and I will get to them when I am inspired again.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by RAK »

Would have to think about it more to have a proper order, but my picks are fairly orthodox here:

Nicholas Latifi: With certain geopolitical events leading last year's bronze medalist in the Reject of the Year and chronic underperformer Nikita Mazepin out of the sport, the spotlight was free to be shone on Latifi and he didn't exactly cover himself in glory. Often an easy pick in the Predictions Predicament Championship for last place, netting easy points when it did happen, his performances indicate a certain unsuitedness to racing at this level and illustrate the power of money over talent in acquiring a Formula One race seat. When Nyck de Vries, a driver who had been overlooked as a potential Formula One driver for years due to what was seen as a lacklustre grid when he won Formula Two, hopped straight into the Williams at the last moment on Saturday and scored points on his race debut competing against Latifi, that gave a good indication to the gulf in performance between Latifi and the better drivers on the grid independent of the car.

Daniel Ricciardo: An undistinguished season for the Australian where he was shown up by his younger teammate, Ricciardo's once glittering reputation has plunged significantly from the time when he proved a genuine challenge for his teammates at Red Bull.

Ferrari: One of the biggest cases of shooting one's self in the foot I've seen in the sport. On the face of it, Ferrari had the car to compete, with what appeared to be a properly quick car, but a combination of farcical Ferrari strategy calls and miserable reliability cost Leclerc any chance to genuinely compete, with a chasm of almost 150 points of difference between him and Verstappen by the end of the year.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Rob Dylan »

With his resignation now announced, I would have to add as an honourable mention:

Mattia Binotto. Ferrari had their best year since 2018, and their first chance at a title since that time. They got more wins than the last three seasons combined, had a solid line-up of drivers, took near-enough maximum points in the first couple of races. People who don't work in management have lots of opinions on this kind of thing, about whether firing Binotto will do anything or have any effect on anything. What's important to me is that the team principal of one of the most improved team on the grid since two years ago has been sacked in his most successful year on the job. None of the team issues have been ironed out, be it strategy, pitstops, and general logistics all over. Binotto takes a sizeable share of that blame.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Rob Dylan »

Somehow we have also forgotten to mention the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, what with the behemoth that was the season flattening our heads with so many races.

A race which was somehow more farcical than the 2021 race. Almost 100 people were executed by the state a few days prior to the event. Sebastian Vettel didn't turn up, and I for one don't believe for a minute that he was sick. The drivers and teams threatened by the government when suggesting that they would cancel the race in light of military assaults happening mere kilometres away from the track on Friday. Domenicali "encouraging" the paddock to let the race go ahead. The event still being a deathtrap with scary incidents such as Mick Schumacher's in qualifying sending him to hospital.

What was the aftermath? Saudi Arabia signs a 15 year contract to run grands prix until the end of time.
Murray Walker at the 1997 Austrian Grand Prix wrote:The other [Stewart] driver, who nobody's been paying attention to, because he's disappointing, is Jan Magnussen.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Row Man Gross-Gene »

Rob Dylan wrote: 01 Dec 2022, 09:32 Somehow we have also forgotten to mention the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, what with the behemoth that was the season flattening our heads with so many races.

A race which was somehow more farcical than the 2021 race. Almost 100 people were executed by the state a few days prior to the event. Sebastian Vettel didn't turn up, and I for one don't believe for a minute that he was sick. The drivers and teams threatened by the government when suggesting that they would cancel the race in light of military assaults happening mere kilometres away from the track on Friday. Domenicali "encouraging" the paddock to let the race go ahead. The event still being a deathtrap with scary incidents such as Mick Schumacher's in qualifying sending him to hospital.

What was the aftermath? Saudi Arabia signs a 15 year contract to run grands prix until the end of time.
Agree about this. If I could wave a magic wand, this would be the first race to go. Maybe next year we'll have a bunch of sick drivers to send a message.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by RAK »

I share that opinion as well, although the length of the season and the way it dragged on probably contributes to why I wasn't considering it. That said, it's a black mark on the sport and on Liberty to race there.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by dj_vicious »

So many great suggestions! I'm going to add my thoughts here!

3. Ferrari: Akin to others' sentiment here, Ferrari should NOT have been taking the Bronze metal for ROTR, being the fastest car in qualifying much of the year, and in the first half of the season looking like the favourite for the WDC and WCC. But Ferrari once again plagued itself with self sabotage, and didn't seem to react until Red Bull led by Verstappen were too far gone with the championships. Ferrari has a group of talented individuals who can build a hell of a car- this isn't the problem. The problem is a desperately needed change in the leadership culture. I remember a bright-eyed Sebastian Vettel, coming off a horrid final year at Red Bull seemed to take 2015 by storm when he joined Ferrari. By the end of 2020, we saw a broken man, with half a foot through the retirement door. Two years on we have Charles Leclerc coming off this season partially tattered. How much longer will this talented driver be able to put up?

2. Lance Stroll: I mentioned Vettel already planning his retirement and seemingly joining Aston Martin to secure a quick pension fund. However, Vettel drove well, taking the lion's share of points in 2021 and 2022. At the same time, Stroll, the driver this team is built around, was completely anonymous, that is when he wasn't crashing or blocking other drivers. As a Canadian I've been a bit of a Stroll apologist, and it's not entirely unfounded. Stroll seems like a driver who is brilliant on his (rare) day, and particularly good in changing conditions. This year Stroll was completely out of his depth, outdriven, and outpaced, and made no positive impression.

If you're wondering why Latifi is not instead in this spot, it's because by the first two rounds of 2022, we know Latifi was the only driver that was genuinely not at the same level of talent as the rest of the drivers. He performed no better or worse than we genuinely could have expected. Stroll on the other hand carries a higher expectation of performance, and he utterly failed to deliver.

1. Daniel Ricciardo: This is the driver that demolished Vettel's 2014 championship defense, and forced him to run to Ferrari. The driver touted as the next champion. What the Hell happened? Vettel's 2022 was at least somewhat of a swansong. Ricciardo fizzled out, then continued to spread the ashes as the season went on. Completely outpaced by Norris in 2021, albeit scoring a win for the team. Understandably people identified the car as not suited to Danny, and 2022 should be a better year, given the new regulations. 2022 was even worse for the Australian. Apologists still point to the car as unsuited to him, but the excuse is a poor one at best.

The spark that made Danny so special, so quick and so liked by fans seems to have disappeared. It's a depressing thought, and I genuinely hope a year off can help him find himself again. Unfortunately there is no way to ignore this shockingly bad year for an otherwise 'top tier' driver. As a result, I nominate him ROTY.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Alextrax52 »

Has Saudi Arabia really been given that contract this year? That’s an absolute shambles and just shows how much the green notes really matter to those who run F1. I’ve said it before but I hope all 20 drivers just flat out refuse to go there. Unlike this year there’s a 2 week gap between Bahrain and Saudi so I bet they’ll be thinking about it. I agree with Rob in that I’m starting to think Vettel pulled out for reasons not related to COVID sickness

Anyway here’s what I’d go with for ROTY in my honest opinion. It is a bit long I must say

Honourable Mentions

Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes: I’m well aware I’m quick to criticize both these entities and I really did consider giving it to just the latter as a whole. But ultimately ROTY is partly based on pre-season expectations and let’s be honest when everyone was making their predictions in February I don’t think anyone was expecting what actually happened for these 2 this season.

This was supposed to be Hamilton’s road to writing the wrongs of how 2021 ended, getting justice in the eyes of his legion of fans and he made bullish statements before pre-season testing. To end the campaign winless, poleless and 6th overall, all of which were record lows for him was very hard to take. He drove some amazing races (Silverstone, Hungary, Austin) but there were also a few poor ones (Jeddah, Imola, Monaco, Singapore) and a fair share of contact. The sight of him walking down the gravel road at Spa summed up his year.

As for Mercedes the W13 the team produced will not go down as one of Brackley’s best. The main issue of course was it’s porposing/bouncing which meant the team rarely got to run it at the ride height it wanted to without causing the drivers pain. But there were 3 other key issues as well. It couldn’t generate tyre temperature well enough at starts, on outlaps or at restarts (Silverstone was a great example of that), it’s qualifying pace was woeful, excluding Sprints and Penalties the W13 only achieved 5 top 3 starts all year. Finally the zero sidepods concept created too much drag and made the car so slow in a straight line which meant on the power tracks they couldn’t hold a candle to Red Bull or Ferrari

I’ll let them get just a HM because they chipped away at the deficit as the year went on and they arguably ended the year slightly ahead of Ferrari but both driver and team need to get back on their A-game for 2023 because if they don’t it might be another easy cruise to the title for Verstappen next year

Aston Martin: For three quarters of this season I thought I was watching Jaguar 2002 from Aston Martin. The car was a dud, it’s single lap pace was atrocious and in the early season they looked pretty amateurish which resulted in one of the worst weekends I’ve ever seen from a team in Australia. They were playing catch up from race one.

While the car wasn’t great I mentioned after Austria that their driver line up was the most unmotivated on the grid and for that first three quarters I stick by that claim. They had a lead driver more interested in picking fights with politicians over environmental matters (His appearance on BBC Question Time and his T-Shirt about Tar sands in Canada being the most notable) than actually pedaling a Grand Prix car quickly while their other driver knows that as long as his dad owns the team he can get away with rubbish performances and causing big accidents as much and as long as he wants.

In all fairness Aston Martin did improve the car as the year went on and Vettel regained a bit of mojo meaning that in the last 6 races they actually looked like best of the midfield at times and by years end they so nearly bagged 6th in the constructors. But still the fact remains that with 6 races to go they sat 9th with just 25 points on the board which isn’t good enough for a team who want to be winners by year 5. There hasn’t been much fuss kicked up yet but you can guarantee that if next year’s car isn’t up to it then new recruit Fernando Alonso certainly will.

Alfa Romeo: On the face of it 6th overall represents a fantastic season for the Sauber ran Alfa Romeo team. It’s their best showing since 2013 after all. But the way they got to it has to leave question marks. They started the campaign with a car that could challenge for big points and I’m still convinced that Valterri Bottas could have had a podium at Imola without a slow pitstop. But as the year progressed they slid further and further down the order in the same depressing way this team used to in Sauber’s first independent spell pre-BMW. 51 points in the first 9 races but only 4 in the last 13 tells it’s own story and by years end they were lucky that Aston Martin didn’t overhaul them.

Mick Schumacher: The son of Michael looked more like Ralf in his final season of F1. I gave him the benefit of the doubt last year because he was driving an awful car that only had the most mandatory of tweaks given to it because Haas were looking to 2022 before arguably 2020 had even finished and said car was pretty rubbish in 2020 anyway. It was also hard to judge him against his paying joke of a teammate. This year the car was better with a stronger teammate so Mick had to deliver and he failed to do so as he was outqualified 16-6 and outscored 25-12 by a man who’d spent 2021 on the sidelines. There was a little purple patch between Canada-Austria where he finally looked like he was coming of age but it proved to be a false dawn with the flashes of speed just not backed up by the results needed. Plus he wrote off millions of pounds worth of damage in Jeddah and Monaco. The low point was Brazil qualifying where he qualified last while Magnussen provided the feel good moment of the whole year. I’m not completely surprised he lost his seat but to lose it to a 35 year old Hulkenberg who last raced full time in 2019 has to sting.

Nicolas Latifi: Pretty atrocious season overall. The 11th hour removal of Nikita Mazepin put the spotlight firmly on Latifi this year and he failed miserably. He was usually the slowest driver, Albon thrashed him even worse than Russell did and the final straw was De Vries’s cameo at Monza picking up points while Latifi was 2nd last. The only reason I let him escape the ROTY podium is because it was kind of what I expected from him. And he did come up with some genuinely amazing moments such as Q3 at Silverstone, Topping a practice session in Hungary and his points finish at Japan. Overall though I don’t think many will be sad to see him go.

Podium

3rd: Alpine’s Contract Management Saga: Probably the biggest contract fiasco since Jenson Button tried to rejoin Williams in 2004. Firstly they effectively pushed Alonso out the door by not giving him what he wanted (he wanted 2 years, they only wanted to give him 1 before palming him off to their sportscar project). Then presumably through determination not to make the same mistake again they announced that Oscar Piastri would take Alonso’s place at Alpine. Only problem was they released the statement without young Oscar’s permission and he was all too glad to press the nuclear button and refused to drive for them with discussions taking place with McLaren.

The matter then went to the CRB where unsurprisingly it ruled in favour of McLaren meaning Alpine lost it’s star for the future. To rub salt in the wound it then emerged that Piastri had actually signed his McLaren contract after Silverstone a month before the fiasco happened. Alpine management really haven’t taken it well since with both Otmar Szafnauer and Laurent Rossi trying to drag Piastri’s name through the mud at any opportunity and there were even rumours that they were thinking of closing the academy altogether

It forced Alpine to look elsewhere and eventually settle on buying Pierre Gasly out of his AlphaTauri contract. Now don’t get me wrong the pairing of Gasly/Ocon is solid and will get good results but considering Alpine could have had at least one of Alonso or Piastri in their cars and they lost both in an entirely self inflicted manner, it does feel like the famous catchphrase “have a look at what you could have won” from Bullseye rings true. Thrown in the fractious past between Ocon and Gasly and it could get very interesting at Alpine next year.

Where Piastri ended up brings us nicely onto…

2nd: Daniel Ricciardo: This wasn’t how it was meant to go. Daniel had a difficult time dealing with the 2021 car but he still had enough solid results and one big one to earn a 2nd season. The new car was meant to suit him more and we’d see a return to his form at Renault and Red Bull. Instead he was further off Lando Norris’s pace than last year and this time he didn’t get the half decent results to earn another year. Only 6th in Australia, a fortunate 5th in the Singapore chaos and a 7th in Mexico (where he still punted Yuki Tsunoda out) were worth shouting about this year.

While Lando was a regular in Q3 and only failed to score 5 times, Danny boy was usually at the bottom of Q2 and only scored 7 times. When Lando struggled it was usually because McLaren as a whole sucked (Bahrain, Canada, Belgium), when Danny struggled you couldn’t help but feel it was down to him and at Monaco, Silverstone, Zandvoort and Austin he really did give off an impression that he was only taking part in the race not actually competing in it.

Forget about his Honey Badger moniker, his infectious smile and popularity with the casual fan, the fact is apart from Monza last year he failed to deliver in McLaren colours and I’m not surprised they decided to terminate the relationship a year early because his performances pretty much single handedly cost the Orange team 4th in the constructors. His return to Red Bull as a reserve next year is quite intriguing. Is he going there for a break or is it a potential route back to the race seat for 2024? We’ll find out.

1st: Ferrari
Enforcer summed them up better than I ever could. I think back to Australia when Leclerc had a 46 point lead on Verstappen and Ferrari looked like genuine contenders to finally end their title drought. What followed was a catalogue of errors from an operational, reliable and strategical point of view that transpired to deliver just 2 wins in the last 19 races and only 1 for its lead driver who should have been contending for this title. While Verstappen and Red Bull’s scintillating 2nd half of the year would probably have denied Ferrari both titles anyway, the Scuderia couldn’t even execute their challenge well enough to mathematically take the title to around Brazil. Off the top of my head…

Sainz crashed in Australia
Sainz and Leclerc crashed at Imola
Sainz spun off and Leclerc broke down at Spain
Ferrari accidentally double stacked in Monaco which left Leclerc 4th after Pole
Both cars broke down in Baku
Butchered strategies in Great Britain, France and Hungary
Sainz broke down in Austria
The fastest lap shambles with Leclerc in Belgium
Leclerc’s error at Japan which meant it was officially game over

By Belgium the car had also become a Saturday merchant in the vein of the 2002 Williams. Whether that was because they simply failed to keep up development or the Floor TD introduced that weekend changed things I don’t know but it became a common sight to see the Red cars burn through their tires and make earlier and extra stops which meant in race trim they were blown away by Red Bull and being matched if not bettered by Mercedes who started the year miles behind them. The fact they went into Abu Dhabi only 19 points ahead of Brackley was scandalous.

Mattia Binotto has ultimately paid with his job and I say not before time. That should have happened after Silverstone where I’m still mentally trying to process how badly he mismanaged that race and Leclerc’s strategy. And then he came out and effectively said he prioritized a maiden win for Sainz over Leclerc’s title ambitions!!. It’s like he thought he was in charge of Haas and not the biggest name in F1. His indifference to Leclerc’s speed was baffling as if he never truly believed he should be the number 1 driver. Whoever replaces Binotto needs to be ruthless, organized and take no nonsense because Ferrari are now coming up to the 1983-1999 title drought length and it can’t go on much longer.

So that’s my verdict. Let’s do it all again in 2023
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Har1MAS1415 »

This is a tough one but I had to name a proper stand-out ROTY, it has to be Ferrari, it's almost as if they conspired to ruin Leclerc's chances as well as their own. It was even worse than 2017 and 2018. After starting the season so strongly too.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Rob Dylan »

The poll is finally up after a bit of delay. We're hosting this for a week, being such a big and important award. With eight candidates you still only have one vote available to you, so use it wisely. Those candidates in more detail are as follows:

AlphaTauri – if any team can be anonymous over 22 races, AlphaTauri managed it. A boastful Pierre Gasly performed at the absolute base level of expectations, beating Yuki Tsunoda who has simply never grabbed his potential in the last two seasons. Both drivers were fighting a car that was mediocre, and neither seemed to grab any spotlights for positive reasons. Instead, motivation dropped early and Gasly was more than happy to be out and driving for someone else in 2023.

The Alpine/McLaren contract drama – Alpine lost two star drivers after dumping Alonso. Their relationship with Fernando broke down quite sadly, while their pre-emptive announcement of an Oscar Piastri deal might be the funniest reject moment of the year. Piastri had already signed for McLaren, while in the meantime the public were treated to a months-long contract debacle which ended with the team holding supposed championship ambitions gaining Pierre Gasly instead. McLaren gained Piastri, while Alonso would prefer to drive for Aston Martin. Even with Alpine beating McLaren in the championship, they have not gained any respect or support for this debacle.

Aston Martin – the outgoing Sebastian Vettel, even at his own often half-baked performance level, still completely outclassed the son of the team owner, while neither had very much chance for the majority of the season to take what was a crap chassis to any considerable position. One driver was more interested in using his position as a political platform, the other forgetting that his car has mirrors. Not exactly the finest hour for a team who wants to win races and really doesn’t want to draw comparisons to the Jaguar from 20 years ago.

Daniel Ricciardo – While Daniel’s 2021 had been dire, there was a lot of support from the audience at home and the team in the McLaren garage to help him succeed. However, 2022 was a continuation and worsening of the problem. The Australian never got used to the car underneath him, and he continued to be beaten down by his teammate race after race. McLaren rightly lost patience after more than enough time, and had they acted sooner, they might even have saved their fourth place in the constructors’ championship.

Ferrari – same old Ferrari. Their best car since 2018, and a motivated driver line-up. While neither Carlos Sainz nor Charles Leclerc ended the season with an unblemished record, the fault for their throttling of the title lies squarely with the continuing implosion of the internal workings at the team. Backwards development, engine blow-ups, strategy blunders: it was all there, and what started as a scene of pure elation in Bahrain saw both drivers broken men already by the summer.

Mick Schumacher – a few moments of serious promise in Austria were followed by a whole series of nothing for the rest of the year. The supposed inevitable improvement from Mick never arrived, and he was never there when it mattered. Adding to this a continuing tendency to smash the car to bits, meant that he was beaten by a teammate who was airdropped into the team a few weeks before the season began.

Nicholas Latifi – after the half-second of silence for the loss of Nikita Mazepin from the F1 grid, the audience’s eyes turned on the Canadian Nicholas Latifi. After being there at all the right moments in 2021, the following year had him finishing considerably behind his teammate and everyone olse on the grid. Terribly slow and not very reliable, his third year in the championship tarnished his reputation permanently.

The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix – calling the weekend a farce dilutes the seriousness of the crisis that faced F1’s staff members, drivers and families. A military attack next to the track, threats by the local government to renounce exit visas, followed by Liberty granting a (surely-unprecedented?) 15-year contract to the organisers.


Choose wisely - see you in a week :dance:
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FalconCapelli
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by FalconCapelli »

Saudi Arabian GP is definitely ROTY, hell it is ROTD (Reject of the Decade) no one will top up these stupid decisions around that weekend, even ferrari strategy team would provide better race experience than the racing around that track, istanbul park is not in calender, but saudi arabia is? that is real nonsense, FIA is governed by shite people for years!
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Aerond »

I just voted for the contract saga. It was pure reject gold comedy and, while all the other candidates are valid, they all have their upsides (yes, even the Saudi Arabian GP, which featured a great fight between Leclerc and Verstappen). There was nothing but rejectfulness in the contract saga (which also indirectly involved McLaren indycar project as well) and we're thankful to Alpine for being able to pull this one off in what would have been a much more traditional choice.
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Re: 2022 Reject of the Year Awards

Post by Hermann95 »

Has to be Daniel Ricciardo. For someone so highly praised, to fall flat on his face for a second year in a row is just unacceptable.
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