Formula 1: All 10 teammate battles ranked from #10 to #1
By Ian Higgins
With some expectations already set from the 2021 Formula 1 season, which intra-team battles could boil over and become the headline of 2022?
Ayrton Senna vs. Alain Prost, Lewis Hamilton vs. Fernando Alonso, Sebastian Vettel vs. Mark Webber. Some of the best rivalries in the history of Formula 1 have been the product of the best drivers on the grid being given absolutely equal machinery to engage in head-to-head combat.
Although they provide some of the best entertainment to fans of the sport, they also present the most harmful dynamic that can be present in a team’s season (ex: Hamilton vs. Alonso allowed for Ferrari’s Kimi Raikkonen to win the 2007 championship in the final race by a single point over the tied McLaren duo).
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Last season, teammate rivalries with genuine friction were hard to come across in the competitive portion of the grid, with only Ferrari’s combination of “golden child” Charles Leclerc and quick-adapter Carlos Sainz consistently finding themselves on the same pieces of track come Sunday.
The most testing teammate relationship of the season was certainly former Formula 2 rivals Mick Schumacher and Nikita Mazepin, producing a number of close calls and season-defining overtakes in an otherwise disregarded season for the 2022 hopefuls.
Many teams witnessed a healthy gelling between teammates though, setting a positive base for drivers as they prepare to enter a new era of Formula 1 regulations in which closer racing has become the primary emphasis. Acting as a “slate-cleaning” for all manufacturers, some drivers could be put back on par with their teammates in new machinery.
Alongside closer competition throughout the field as a whole, preventing time loss from intra-team scraps and working together to manage track position will make massive differences in the overall success of individual manufacturers throughout the season (we all know the influence of a well-positioned Valtteri Bottas or Sergio Perez last season).
With that being said, which teams on the 2022 Formula 1 grid should expect collaboration from their drivers and who should prepare for mutually assured destruction between unforgiving competitors?