It’s awards season! The time of year when we at GrandPrix247 look back on the 2022 Formula 1 season and choose who gets one of our awards. Our race of the year? The British Grand Prix.
The competition for the Race of the Year award was close between the 2022 British Grand Prix, and the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix, both great F1 race weekends to be honest, but the grand prix at Silverstone edged towards the lead in the end and we think we know why.
The race at Silverstone will remain a memorable one for two main reasons the first, and most famous being the miracle that saw Alfa Romeo’s Zhou Guanyu walk away from his horrifying crash on the opening lap after getting tangled up with Mercedes’ George Russell.
Zhou’s crash was one of the scariest we have witnessed in F1, probably ever since Romain Grosjean’s fiery crash in Bahrain in 2020, and the common denominator for both accidents being: The Halo.
The Halo saved Grosjean from direct impact with the barriers his Haas pierced, and also kept Zhou’s head from scraping on the track surface as his car skidded upside down on the track and onto the gravel trap before ending up in an awkward position between the tyre barriers and the fence.
Carlos Sainz’s maiden pole and win
The second memorable moment from the British Grand Prix was Carlos Sainz clinching his first F1 pole position and transforming it into his maiden win in the top flight, after a mature performance where the Spaniard saved Ferrari from themselves when they tried to impose ridiculous team orders asking the #55 Ferrari not to attack the #16 of Charles Leclerc on aging tyres (due to Ferrari’s usual genius strategies) and have its back.
Sainz put his foot down both literally and metaphorically and overtook his teammate to take his first win in F1 at one of its most famous venues, Silverstone.
While the British Grand Prix wins this award, an honourable mention goes out to the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix, which came close in our readers’ voting as well.
It was a great race where we saw one of Max Verstappen’s most dominant drives, with anticipation ahead of the race to see the effect of the FIA’s TD039 which Mercedes among many hoped would slow Red Bull down, but it didn’t while the Silver Arrows had one of their worst races in 2022.
However ultimately, Silverstone beats Spa for this award. (Compiled by Jad Mallak)
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