“We need 45 races to get the Ferrari”. Like this Max Verstappen it thundered bitterly in Australia after his second knockout in three races at the beginning of 2022. The Dutch driver painstakingly captured the number 1 in 2021 and after a few races this season the chance to defend the title seemed to have vanished in the face of a very strong Ferrari. to a very fragile Red Bull. Five races later, or having reached eight GPs this season, Max Verstappen leads the standings with 21 points clear of Sergio Perez and 34 of margin over Charles Leclerc. A reversal of unimaginable proportions to which many factors have contributed, including luck as the Dutch driver has often candidly admitted at a press conference on several occasions.
“I honestly thought it was over or that it would take a very long time to recover anyway – said Max Verstappen guest of the Red Bull podcast Talking Bulls – at the beginning of the year it was not known how competitive our car would be and after two retirements in three races with 46 points of disadvantage, I believed that the championship for this year was now over ”.
The Dutch driver is not sleeping on his laurels, his rival Charles Leclerc is very fierce and has declared that he sees himself as world champion at the end of the season. According to Verstappen, Red Bull has already spent all the ‘wild cards’ available and no more zeros can be afforded: “It is obviously a great satisfaction to see that we have reversed the situation, but as we did, our opponents can do it too. First of all, our goal must be to never retire, already two zeros are too many in a championship“.
Verstappen in 2021 registered three zeros, none attributable to reliability reasons, at least not directly from Red Bull. In Baku the failure of the left rear tire sent him to the wall, at Silverstone he ended up in contact with Lewis Hamilton as well as in Monza. The Dutchman knows that in the span of a season, setbacks weigh heavily and Charles Leclerc’s two retirements in the last three races have essentially equalized the scores at the level of technical knockouts between the two 1997. Verstappen won 5 games against 2 of the Monegasque and in general has been more constant, always getting on the podium in the six races in which he reached the finish line. The consistency of performance and the ability of the teams to avoid mechanical knockouts will make the difference when it comes to dealing with the final of the season given that just over a third of the championship took place, or eight out of twenty-two races.
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