Formula One returns with Max Verstappen still holding all the cards

If 2021 was the controversy-laden epic, last season was more akin to a damp squib of a sequel for Formula One.

Not that it lacked for excitement. The 2022 campaign had its fair share of enthralling races but it was always on a hiding to nothing when compared directly with the fearsome title tussle that preceded it between Max Verstappen and seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton, which ultimately ended in rancour and recrimination.

But looking back through history, it's not all too often that close title battles happen in consecutive seasons anyway.

Last season, which was the first year under the current regulation changes, it proved to be an easier gauntlet to run for Verstappen who made it title number two in succession with the chasing pack barely a speck in his wing mirrors as the season progressed.

But will the Dutchman have it all his own way again when the F1 circus returns for this weekend's 2023 season opener in Bahrain? Or will we see a much closer battle for the drivers' crown?

The short answer to the first question is most probably a resounding yes given the expectation that the order of things towards the top of the grid won't have changed dramatically.

Verstappen is still partnered by Sergio Perez at Red Bull but the relationship between the two drivers was strained by events at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix when the team's number one bluntly - and cryptically from the public and media's vantage point - refushed a team order to let the experienced Mexican past which if he had acceded, could have helped Perez in his ultimately failed bid to take the championship runner-up spot.

Whether Perez will be quite as willing to go out of his way to help Verstappen in a tight title battle as he did in 2021 will be interesting to see,