“He deserved this year’s World Championship,” Mika Hakkinen puts his hat off to Max Verstappen’s ‘dominant’ 2022 season
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Mika Hakkinen and Max Verstappen
Max Verstappen won the 2022 Formula 1 championship after beating his rivals by a huge margin in Suzuka. This victory in Japan was special for the driver as he started his career at the same circuit back in 2014 with Toro Rosso. Mika Hakkinen also accepted Max’s form to be very dominating after managing a 27 seconds gap to the second-best in a 28-lap race. This form by Max has been over the season.
Mika Hakkinen spared no expense in his praise for Max Verstappen, especially for a fantastic performance in Japan. He explains the Dutchman’s Japanese GP to be a perfect win as he went on this win his second title. Verstappen started his race on pole position, but Charles Leclerc eclipsed him at the start until he pulled a fantastic move down the outside out of his bag.
Mika Hakkinen explained in his column for Unibet: “This was a fantastic performance by Max, the kind of race you dream about when going for the World Championship title. He said before the weekend that he just wanted it to be perfect, especially following the problems he and the team had in Singapore a week ago.” adding: “To win by 27 seconds after such a short race was brilliant. Max’s 12th win of the year really shows how much he deserved this year’s World Championship – he dominated.”
Mika Hakkinen appreciates Adrian Newey having an impact on Max Verstappen’s win
Mika Hakkinen is a two-time world champion with McLaren. The credit for a great McLaren history goes to his part but also to the designer of his car, Adrian Newey. The British engineer can be considered the greatest car designer of all time. Newey alone has won 12 world championships with Red Bull, Williams and McLaren.
Hakkinen showered praise on Red Bull’s Chief Technical Officer: “I am also very happy for Red Bull’s technical boss Adrian Newey. It was thanks to his work at McLaren that I had great cars with which to win both my World Championship titles and he is still winning at Red Bull all these years later.”
The Finn congratulated Newey: “He really is the most successful designer in F1 history, and although I know he has a great team of design engineers working with him, his technical leadership is just brilliant. Even during Mercedes’ dominant years, Red Bull remained competitive and it’s amazing to see Adrian’s team take advantage of this year’s new regulations to win another title. Congratulations to him.”
Max Verstappen won the second World title beating Charles Leclerc and Sergio Perez the nearest ones to him in the driver’s championship. Red Bull is yet to have both their hands on the constructor championship, but they have a very good chance to do just that in Austin, unless Ferrari outscore them by 19 points.
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Soham Raj Jain
(480 Articles Published)