2022 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix highlights

Formula One’s new era began with an enthralling 2022 Formula 1 Bahrain Grand Prix. Lance Stroll worked his way up the field and finished 12th, while Nico Hülkenberg put together a clean race to finish 17th despite his lack of experience with the AMR22.

Lance Stroll

It is a shame we were not able to fight for points today, but we will benefit from completing our first race and understanding more about these new regulations. It is early days and there are lots to learn about how we can extract more performance in time for the race in Saudi Arabia next weekend. My initial impression is that it could be an exciting season of racing because it appears that you can follow cars more closely and today I had some great battles with [Alex] Albon and [Mick] Schumacher. It was challenging to keep temperatures cool and manage these new tyres, too, but we now have some useful data to work with over the next few days.

Nico Hülkenberg

It was interesting to be back in a Formula One car for a Grand Prix again, especially in such a busy race with lots going on around me. It was not easy to manage the tyres and drive with a changing fuel load. The car balance was changing a lot too, and it is not easy to prepare for this until you start racing. We knew that today was likely going to be the most difficult day in the car for that reason, which proved to be the case. I think I put together a good race, all things considered, with only the one mistake when I outbraked myself into Turn One. It was a more challenging race after that. I will be on standby should the team need me again and I am hoping that Sebastian makes a speedy return to racing.

Mike Krack

Both our drivers were required to lift and coast at various points during today’s race, but they did it proficiently and we were, therefore, able to bring both cars to the finish. A P12/P17 result is not what we wanted, of course not, but it was always going to be hard to achieve a strong finish from our starting positions. Nonetheless, Lance drove well to convert his P19 grid slot to P12 at flag-fall, and, having not raced in Formula One since November 2020 [the Eifel Grand Prix at Nürburgring], Nico also did a good job today. Our car currently lacks pace – clearly – but we will endeavour to put up a better show in Saudi Arabia in a few days’ time.

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