Does Verstappen have any weaknesses left?

Simply put, it was a virtuoso performance from Max Verstappen in Canada. Although grid penalties meant it wasn’t chief rival Charles Leclerc breathing down his neck in qualifying or the grand prix to heighten the pressure to the extreme, the defending champion nevertheless spent much of his time at Montreal dabbling with perfection.

The latest of his 26 Formula 1 triumphs, which places Verstappen ninth on the all-time winners list, moved the Dutch racer 46 points clear of Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez, with Leclerc another three adrift. For Ferrari and Perez, who retired with a hydraulics failure last Sunday, it’s not enough to hope that Verstappen hits further reliability trouble to go with his early-season DNFs in Bahrain and Australia. They need to pinpoint and, more critically, exploit any Verstappen deficits if they are to take the title to the wire.

Unfortunately for them, it’s slim pickings.

Verstappen’s main flaw in 2021 was his borderline inability to race cleanly with Lewis Hamilton. The Briton wasn’t perfect in this regard either, see Silverstone. But Verstappen was beyond robust at Barcelona, Monza, Interlagos and Jeddah. That he hasn’t been collecting another stash of licence penalties points in 2022 (partly because he can’t afford to, joint top with seven) reflects the improvement.

A lot of that development has been attributed to the change in opposition and chalking a first title to get the monkey off his back. Now fighting long-time junior sparring partner Leclerc, the DRS detection battles of Bahrain and Saudi Arabia plus the brief exchanges in the Imola sprint race and at Miami have been clean and borderline cordial. In the press conferences, there's been little to no needle.

Prior to Canada, it was the Emilia Romagna GP weekend that ranked as Verstappen’s standout performance of the campaign. His poor launch in the sprint aside, the one flaw was his qualifying effort. Granted, he secured pole on Ferrari home soil by a mighty 0.779s over Leclerc. But that was the only lap he didn’t mess up in changing wet-dry circumstances. Whereas at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve, he navigated the treacherous conditions beautifully to top the timing screens in every part of qualifying by a cumulative and imperious 1.8s.

That effort looked all the more impressive when Carlos Sainz made a hash of the final chicane to cede a front-row start to Fernando Alonso, who in turn offered no great threat on the opening lap of the race.

Verstappen was unchallenged at the start of the Canadian GP having taken an impressive pole position

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

PLUS: The breakthrough behind Sainz's best 2022 weekend so far

Where one-lap pace is concerned, however, there is a weakness for Verstappen. Having won in Azerbaijan and then been challenged to find fault with a perfect-seeming weekend, he did call on Red Bull to give him more on a Saturday.

Similarly, in his post-Baku column on Max’s website, dad Jos wrote: “The only thing that’s still lacking is qualifying. Saturday you could see the frustration during the post-session interview because it’s not going yet like he wants it to.

“If [Red Bull] can sort out the qualifying, things will be easier for him. On street circuits this is even more evident. There is less rubber and he has more difficulty to rotate the car quickly.

“The good news is that during a race, the Red Bull goes like a rocket. The balance of the car is good. During a longer run the tyres behave differently and the car becomes quicker with turning. Max can deal with that very well.”

Verstappen is capable of flawless performances but on his comparative off-days, Leclerc, Ferrari and Perez haven’t been close enough or consistent enough to punish him

This doesn’t quite tell the full story - not unsurprisingly from a defensive father. For while Red Bull has some ground to recover in qualifying, at least this year, it is also a chink in Verstappen’s armour.

The reason Daniil Kvyat, Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon have been chewed up and spat out by the Red Bull senior team is their inability to come close to Verstappen to offer a two-pronged attack against Mercedes and, occasionally, Ferrari. Their major shortcoming was difficulties managing an incredibly lively rear axle.

Verstappen thrives with a pointy, nervous car. He’s no fan, somewhat counterintuitively, of neutral car balance and he’s downright uncomfortable with understeer. The previous generation of machinery offered him what he craved. But the switch to ground-effect has made the RB18 less of an ally in this respect. Notably in Monaco, en route to his victory, Perez was able to get the measure of Verstappen thanks to his ease with the underlying car characteristics.

Verstappen had a flawless weekend in Canada en route to victory

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Baku was set to be a repeat judging by the frustrations from Verstappen in practice, and the time he was conceding to Perez. But his ability to manage tyre temperatures during the Sainz-induced virtual safety car meant he was later able to avoid the degrading that took Perez out of contention for back-to-back wins.

Regardless of Verstappen’s prowess in overturning any dropped positions from qualifying when it comes to Sunday, those one-lap shortcomings stem from discomfort (but by no means an inability) to work around a car set-up that isn’t to his absolute liking. That has given Perez those small windows and helped paved the way for Leclerc’s spellbinding run to six poles this season. Although, perhaps a more revealing stat should be that from his six poles, Leclerc has won twice. And also from Leclerc’s six poles, Verstappen has triumphed three times.

Some of that can be attributed to the wins lost through unreliability for Leclerc in Spain and Azerbaijan. Along with the strategy clangers from Monaco, Ferrari has allowed three possible victories to go up in smoke. But Verstappen has been there to pick up the pieces.

Is Verstappen operating at the height of his powers? Quite possibly… and if not, that’s a daunting prospect. Is he fallible? Yes. While Leclerc notably spun out of a near-guaranteed podium in his pursuit of Perez in Imola, there have been mistakes from Verstappen. He slipped off the road in Q3 to cede pole for the inaugural Miami GP and although wind might have played a part, Verstappen dropped the ball big time when he lost the car at Turn 4 in Spain. Had Leclerc’s engine not expired then for Verstappen, that was a win chucked away.

That in a nutshell, though, reflects the battle everyone faces against Verstappen. He is capable of flawless performances but on his comparative off-days, Leclerc, Ferrari and Perez haven’t been close enough or consistent enough to punish him. It’s not a long list of weaknesses for Verstappen, but where they do crop up, he has been let off the hook.

Can anyone catch Verstappen this season?

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images