How do the F1 teams including Mercedes, Red Bull and McLaren rank ahead of 2022 season?

With less than a week to go until the first race of the 2022 Formula 1 season, all ten teams have now tested their new machinery in two shakedown sessions.

The first took place at Barcelona three weeks ago and the second in Bahrain between last Thursday and Saturday, as drivers sought to get to grips with an entirely new generation of car design for the first time after an enormous regulation change.

The technical shift has primarily been devised in order to allow F1 cars to follow one another more closely. The previous era’s machinery lost so much downforce in the dirty are of the car in front that following was difficult and overtaking was rendered almost impossible at some circuits on the calendar.

F1 is hoping that changes to aerodynamic rules will reduce the loss of downforce when following, allow drivers to race one another harder, and lead to more overtaking. The changes mean there is potential for the grid order to be shaken up, with teams who have nailed the transition moving forward while those who have not slip backwards.

One issue all teams have faced to some extent with the ground effect designs is porpoising, which sees the cars bounce up and down violently at high speeds on long straights, and requires a design fix of some sort.

The laptimes set in pre-season testing offer some insight into which cars are quick and which are not, but are notoriously unreliable as teams run completely different fuels on a variety of programs as they prioritise data gathering over pure performance. Video footage of how the cars handle corners, drivers’ comments after running the cars over the course of the test, and the demeanour emanating from each team are often the strongest indicators.

Even still, estimating the running order