The five unluckiest drivers of the season so far

They say fortune favours the brave, but that hasn’t been the case for a few drivers in the opening rounds of the 2022 campaign.

Here’s who we think have been the five unluckiest on the grid in the first four race weekends…

The bad luck Verstappen has endured needs little explaining. If not for reliability issues, he’d be leading the standings rather than trailing Charles Leclerc by 27 points.

In the opening round of the year, the Dutchman was running in P2 and challenging his rival for the win with only a handful of laps left when he was forced to retire with a fuel pump issue. 18 points, and perhaps even more, down the drain.

Then, two rounds later, it turned out that lightning can indeed strike twice. While he wasn’t in contention for the win down under, he was again all but certain to take P2.

The Red Bull man has done very little wrong in terms of his driving so far this year and should have two wins and two P2 finishes to show for it, at the least.

Sainz hasn’t made the best start to the season, retiring from the two most recent rounds after poor qualifying results. While he’s made some mistakes though, the Ferrari man isn’t entirely to blame.

In Australia particularly, the F1 gods seemed to be against him from the off. In qualifying, Fernando Alonso’s crash in Q3 brought out red flags that prevented him from completing a flying lap. Then, when the session resumed, a start-up issue meant he didn’t have enough time to warm up his tyres for his final run.

That caused him to start down in P9, and things didn’t get any better the next day. An issue forced the team to change his steering wheel just before the start, and with its different settings, he had a poor getaway, dropping down the order. In his attempts to make