“I knew from that point onwards I could not afford any mistake from my side,” Max Verstappen recalls his dismal start to the 2022 season
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Max Verstappen watches Charles Leclerc drive past him after retiring at the Australian Grand Prix
Max Verstappen suffered two retirements in the season’s first three races, separated by a win in Saudi Arabia. This was a far-from-ideal start, and it allowed main championship ‘rival’ Charles Leclerc to build a 34-point gap on his closest competition George Russell, while Verstappen was 46 points behind Leclerc, in a distant sixth place. Ferrari were 49 points ahead of Red Bull.
However, from Imola onwards, Ferrari faltered, and Red Bull were resurgent. They won every race from Imola to Canada despite car performance being relatively equal, with Verstappen taking the lion’s share of those wins. Ferrari rechallenged them in Silverstone and Austria, but it was pretty clear that the title was going back to Woking, after the next race in France.
Verstappen ultimately sealed the title with four races to go (and the WCC with three to go), a far cry from how it was for him in 2021 – when it went right down to the last lap. At the end of the season, his closest rival, Charles Leclerc, was 146 points behind. It was definitely far more comfortable for him in 2022, but that doesn’t mean it was easy, and Verstappen knew there was no room for error, especially with how the season started.
In a press conference at the FIA Prize Giving Ceremony, Verstappen said as per RaceFans: “I think you know that when you have to fight for a title, you have to score points, basically every race as much as you can. That’s why, of course, at the beginning of the year it was very tough to have these DNFs.”
Max Verstappen: Tried to be ‘perfect’ every weekend
Of course, Max Verstappen finished every race after Australia, mostly without issue (except for Silverstone, where he had damage), but he and Red Bull could not have known that at the time. So, he had to be perfect, and he very nearly was. Even when he made mistakes, they ended up not mattering at all.
He also tried to be very clean – he did not collide with another driver a single time until the Brazilian Grand Prix, and said that he had to perfect: “I knew from that point onwards I could not afford any mistake from my side, in case we would have a retirement for whatever reason. So you always tried to be as clean as you can be and try to be as perfect as you can every single weekend. And that’s what I tried to demand for myself every time I jump into the car.”
Next year may be a different challenge than 2022, and there’s even potential for a three-way fight with Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes, who improved as the season went on. In any case, Verstappen is unlikely to be as dominant in 2023 as he was this year, even though that will be his goal.
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Aniket Tripathi
(1002 Articles Published)