MPSC 2022 Prelims Paper-I · Question 78 of 100

Correct — option (2), Max Verstappen. The 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was held on 27 March 2022 at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit and was the second round of a Formula One season that ran to twenty-two Grands Prix. Max Verstappen, driving for Red Bull Racing, won it ahead of Charles Leclerc of Ferrari, who took second place and set the fastest lap of the race for the additional championship point, with Leclerc's team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr. third. The result was an early indication of how the season would go: Verstappen went on to win the drivers' championship for the second year in succession, clinching it at the Japanese Grand Prix, and Red Bull Racing took the constructors' championship, their fifth and their first since 2013, ending the long run of Mercedes titles. A word about the circuit, because it is asked in its own right. The Jeddah Corniche Circuit is a street track laid out along the Red Sea waterfront in Jeddah and is among the fastest street circuits in the sport; the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix was added to the calendar only in 2021, part of the wider movement of Formula One into West Asia, alongside the long-established Bahrain Grand Prix and the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix that closes the season. For an examination written in Maharashtra in August 2022, a question on this race is a straightforward test of whether a candidate follows international sport as part of current affairs, and it belongs to a category — the winner of a major international sporting event in the preceding year — that appears in almost every paper. The answer to be marked is option (2).

• (1)Charles Leclerc — Charles Leclerc is the most dangerous of the three wrong options, because he was genuinely on the podium at Jeddah — he finished second, behind Verstappen, and set the fastest lap of the race, which under the rules then in force earned an additional championship point for a driver finishing in the top ten. Second place is not victory, and a question asking who won a named race is asking for one name. The option illustrates the standard construction of a well-made sports question: the distractors are not random drivers but the men who actually finished around the winner, so a candidate who remembers that a Ferrari was in contention at Jeddah, or that Leclerc had a strong start to the 2022 season, will find the option attractive. The corrective is to store race results as an ordered podium — first, second, third — rather than as a vague memory of who was competitive, because an examiner can ask for any of the three positions and the same preparation answers all of them. At Jeddah in 2022 the order was Verstappen, Leclerc, Sainz.
• (3)Valtteri Bottas — Valtteri Bottas was not the winner at Jeddah in 2022, and the option is included as a name a candidate is likely to recognise from earlier seasons rather than from that one. Bottas had spent five seasons at Mercedes as team-mate to Lewis Hamilton, a period in which the team won championship after championship, and he left at the end of 2021 to drive for Alfa Romeo in 2022. That change of team is the fact worth attaching to his name, because it explains why a driver associated in a candidate's memory with the front of the field was no longer contending for race wins in the season this question is set in. The general lesson for sports questions is that team affiliations change between seasons and a name learnt with a team is only correct for the years in which it was true; recording the season alongside the driver and the team costs nothing and prevents exactly this kind of error, which is the sporting equivalent of the dating problem that runs through the whole current affairs section.
• (4)Lewis Hamilton — Lewis Hamilton is the most recognisable name in the sport to a general reader, which is precisely why he is placed among the options, and 2022 was the worst season of his career by the measures that matter here. Driving for Mercedes, he took neither a pole position nor a Grand Prix victory in the whole of that season — the first time that had happened since his Formula One career began in 2007 — as Mercedes struggled with a car that was uncompetitive against the Red Bull and the Ferrari. He therefore cannot have won at Jeddah or anywhere else in 2022. The option works on name recognition alone, and it is a good illustration of why a candidate should not answer a sports question by choosing the most famous competitor: fame accumulates over a career while a race result belongs to a single afternoon, and current affairs questions ask about the afternoon. The 2022 season belonged to Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing, who took the drivers' and constructors' championships respectively.

Formula One is contested over a season of Grands Prix — twenty-two in 2022 — with points awarded on a sliding scale to the top ten finishers in each race and an additional point for the fastest lap to a driver finishing in the top ten. Two championships are decided: the drivers' championship, on the points of individual drivers, and the constructors' championship, on the combined points of a team's two cars. The 2022 season was the first under a substantially rewritten set of technical regulations intended to let cars follow one another more closely, and the change reordered the competitive hierarchy: Mercedes, which had dominated the preceding era, fell back, and Red Bull Racing and Ferrari came to the front. Max Verstappen won the drivers' title for the second consecutive year, clinching it at the Japanese Grand Prix, and Red Bull Racing took the constructors' title, their fifth and their first since 2013. Lewis Hamilton, driving for Mercedes, finished the season without a pole position or a race win for the first time since his debut in 2007. The Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, held at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit on the Red Sea waterfront, entered the calendar in 2021 and is among the fastest street circuits in the sport; in 2022 it was the second round of the season, run on 27 March, and Verstappen won it from Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz Jr., both of Ferrari. The race sits within a broader pattern of major sport moving into West Asia, alongside the Bahrain and Abu Dhabi Grands Prix and the football World Cup held in Qatar later the same year.

Sport is a fixed component of the current affairs section in MPSC papers, and the questions are drawn from a predictable pool: the winners of major international tournaments and events, the hosts of forthcoming editions, records set during the year, and Indian performances at multi-sport games. Formula One appears less often than cricket or the Olympic sports but it does appear, and when it does the question is almost always the simplest one available — who won a named Grand Prix, or who won the season's championship. Preparation for this part of the paper should be proportionate. Reading race reports through the year is not a good use of a candidate's time; keeping a one-page list of event winners, updated monthly, is. The list should record the event, the date, the winner and, where a candidate has room, the runner-up, because a distractor in a question of this kind is very often the man who finished second, as it is here. Two further habits reduce errors. First, note the team or country alongside the individual, since team affiliations change between seasons and an out-of-date association is a common source of wrong answers. Second, resist the pull of the most famous name in the options; celebrity is a poor guide to a single result, and in 2022 the most famous driver in Formula One did not win a single race.

• Max Verstappen, driving for Red Bull Racing, won the 2022 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix on 27 March 2022 at the Jeddah Corniche Circuit, the second round of a twenty-two race season.
• Charles Leclerc of Ferrari finished second and set the fastest lap of the race, earning an additional championship point; his team-mate Carlos Sainz Jr. finished third.
• Verstappen won the 2022 drivers' championship, his second in succession, clinching it at the Japanese Grand Prix, and Red Bull Racing won the constructors' championship, their fifth and their first since 2013.
• Valtteri Bottas left Mercedes after five seasons and drove for Alfa Romeo in 2022, so he was no longer contending for race victories in the season this question concerns.
• Lewis Hamilton, at Mercedes, took neither a pole position nor a Grand Prix win in 2022 — the first season without either since his Formula One career began in 2007.

• Choosing the most famous competitor rather than the one who won the named event; Lewis Hamilton won no race at all in 2022
• Confusing the winner with the runner-up; Charles Leclerc finished second at Jeddah and set the fastest lap, and second place is the commonest distractor in a sports question
• Carrying an out-of-date team association; Valtteri Bottas had left Mercedes for Alfa Romeo before the 2022 season began
• Preparing sport by reading reports rather than by keeping a list of event winners with dates, which is the only form in which this material is actually asked

Sport questions in MPSC papers are drawn from the twelve months before the examination and take four regular shapes: who won a named event; where will the next edition of a named event be held; which record was set and by whom; and which Indian sportsperson received a named award. Nothing deeper is asked, because the sport section is there to reward general awareness rather than specialist knowledge. The right preparation is therefore a single sheet, maintained through the year, with a line for each major event giving the date, the winner and the runner-up, and a second sheet for the year's awards and for the hosts of forthcoming editions. Both sheets take minutes a month and they cover the whole of what is asked. What they will not cover is a question about a sport a candidate has never followed, and for those the useful fallback is the reasoning used in this card: identify the season the question concerns, discard names whose association with a team or a period of dominance belongs to a different year, and prefer the competitor the question's own date points to over the one the candidate has heard of most often.

No directly related past PYQ was found.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  Which team won the Formula One constructors' championship in 2022, and for the first time since which year ?

  • (a)Mercedes, first since 2013
  • (b)Red Bull Racing, first since 2013
  • (c)Ferrari, first since 2008
  • (d)McLaren, first since 1998

  Answer(b) Red Bull Racing, first since 2013. The 2022 season was run under substantially rewritten technical regulations, and the change ended the long period of Mercedes dominance: Red Bull took the constructors' title, their fifth in all and their first for nine years, while Max Verstappen won the drivers' championship for the second consecutive season, clinching it at the Japanese Grand Prix.

• practice — not a real PYQ

  The Jeddah Corniche Circuit, which hosted a Formula One race in March 2022, is located in which country ?

  • (a)United Arab Emirates
  • (b)Qatar
  • (c)Bahrain
  • (d)Saudi Arabia

  Answer(d) Saudi Arabia. The Jeddah Corniche Circuit is a street track laid out along the Red Sea waterfront at Jeddah and is one of the fastest street circuits in the sport; it hosted the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, which entered the Formula One calendar in 2021, and the 2022 edition was held on 27 March and won by Max Verstappen. The Abu Dhabi Grand Prix is held in the United Arab Emirates and the Bahrain Grand Prix at Sakhir in Bahrain.