Max Verstappen won his second F1 world championship in 2022 with overwhelming force. However, the lack of pole-to-win shows a new trend for the next generation F1 machine.
Max Verstappen set a new record with 15 wins, his most in a season. He had seven pole positions. This is a stat to aim for given the historical trend of fastest cars winning the most races and pole positions showing the fastest cars.
It wasn’t until after the summer holidays that Max Verstappen had a better car than Charles Leclerc, winning seven out of nine races, but four pole positions during that period. And Verstappen had virtually won the title long before establishing his dominance. About half the season we didn’t win with the fastest car.
“We won a lot of races when we weren’t actually the fastest, but when we had good strategy and consistency,” said Verstappen.
“At one point I got the fastest car and it was a little bit easier. I didn’t have to take all the risks all the time.”
Both Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc say it was F1’s French Grand Prix in round 12 that made Verstappen’s title aware. At that point, Red Bull was clearly no better than Ferrari. It should also be noted that despite Verstappen’s 63-point lead and seven victories, pole position was only achieved three times.
Obviously Max Verstappen didn’t win all those races by himself. In Spain and Azerbaijan Ferrari lost due to poor strategy and reliability problems, and Charles Leclerc self-destructed in France. And there was a moment in the first half of 2022 when the Red Bull RB18 was more balanced than the Ferrari F1-75.
But in the first half of the season, when his wins and points lead were more at odds with the reality of his car, Max Verstappen resorted to what he called the “beautiful” side of the new generation F1 car.
In particular, he was instrumental in his first win of the year in Saudi Arabia, but also helped him to victory in the Imola sprint race.
“For most of the season we haven’t had the fastest car in a lap,” said Verstappen.
“These new cars are very interesting because I knew beforehand that overtaking cars would be very difficult, so I was really focused on qualifying.”
“Even if qualifying isn’t the best, if you have a good race car you can fight and you can really pass.”
“This is the nice side of the new car. If last year we had had problems with qualifying and the problem of not being competitive, we wouldn’t have won as many races as we did this year.”
“Pole position has been fantastic this year, but it hasn’t always meant winning races.
Max Verstappen went on to win more races with this advantage.
In the F1 Hungarian Grand Prix, it was a development that could never have been judged had Ferrari abandoned victory or been overwhelmed, but Verstappen won from the tenth grid. It would have been difficult with the cars of the past.
He won from 14th on the grid at the Belgian F1 GP. While this was the dominance of him and his car at Spa, these characteristics almost certainly helped in Italy and the United States as well.
“Some of his racing was out of this world and he deserves a lot of recognition and credit for what he has done this year,” said Red Bull F1 team principal Christian Horner.
“He’s stood out this year. Sure, he always ends up being a contribution to the team, but I think he’s brought out the whole performance.”
“We didn’t always have big smiles on Saturday, but I think we had a very good racing car this year and he made the most of it.”
“Considering the number of times this rule change has made it incredibly difficult to actually beat the DRS, there have been so many occasions where it had to be absolutely perfect.”
“It’s incredible”
Max Verstappen won his second F1 world championship with the most wins and points of the year. And the numbers could show what Verstappen has in store for more than just the car advantage.
Category: F1 / Max Verstappen / Red Bull
