The 2022 season of the Red Bull it was a true triumphal campaign, crowned by 16 victories obtained in 20 races so far disputed and by the 14 successes collected by Max Verstappen which allowed the Dutchman to win his second drivers title and also to exceed the GP record in a single championship, which belonged to the all-German duo Michael Schumacher – Sebastian Vettel. Yet the year had begun in a far from positive way for the Milton Keynes team, beaten by Charles Leclerc’s Ferrari in two of the first three races of the championship and forced to a double zero by Max Verstappen in the Bahrain and Australian GPs for reliability issues.
Also, for at least half of the season, there was a feeling that the RB18 wasn’t the best car on the track. In fact, Ferrari appeared much more competitive in qualifying and better equipped to keep up with the race pace. Only sensational strategy errors and serious reliability problems, for example, have denied the Maranello team any success on tracks such as Monte Carlo, Barcelona and Budapest. Among the troubles that Red Bull had to overcome in the first part of the championship there was a significant excess weight on the car that created problems in several races, especially the ‘first driver’ of the team: Max Verstappen. The complaints of the # 1 prompted the leaders of the Austrian team to make the car lighter and more responsive.
An admission that something was wrong with the ‘bulls’ car even came from the team’s technical director, Adrian Newey. The genius capable of dragging Williams, McLaren and Red Bull itself to the top of the F1 rankings over the years has in fact admitted that the excess weight on the RB18 was “embarrassing”. “The tires were heavier than expected, the hubcaps, the side protection structure – Newey explained to the German site Motorsport-Total.com – we thought we were close to the weight limit, while in reality, we were well above. It was embarrassed – recognized the British engineer – then we had a problem in the side crash test and we had to reinforce the frame structure“. Subsequent developments – and a few missteps by Ferrari – however, allowed the Anglo-Austrian team to successfully compensate for these initial problems.
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