The factors that stopped Perez catching Leclerc in Verstappen's Abu Dhabi triumph

“It was all about tyre management.” As dull a sentence as one can read about modern Formula 1, but with it dominant race winner Max Verstappen summed up the 2022 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix perfectly.

On his way to sealing a seventh 2022 pole, Verstappen had helped team-mate Sergio Perez lockout the front row with faultless tow tactics. Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc trailed in third and needed to head Perez in the race to beat the Mexican to second place in the drivers’ championship.

Leclerc’s task looked tricky. Not only did Red Bull have the best possible starting positions for its drivers, but it had also comprehensively outshone its red rival in FP2 – as ever, the only comparable practice session for this event given its twilight setting.

On Friday evening at the Yas Marina track, Ferrari’s best race pace using the medium tyres had come in 0.6 seconds per lap slower than Red Bull’s leading average on the yellow-walled rubber – set to be an important race compound with the softs a non-starter due to being the softest (C5) in Pirelli’s 2022 range. Leclerc even wondered aloud why he was lapping so slowly.

To improve things, Ferrari had gone out early in final practice to gather additional high-fuel data even in the hotter FP3 conditions – but also to assess a significant set-up tweak. This was moving to its smaller rear wing package, which would help down the straights but also avoid the added downforce of its higher drag arrangement eating into the fragile tyres if the drivers had to push on. In any case, a two-stopper race strategy looked likely ahead of Sunday’s twilight event. But if the drivers could take things slightly easier, one-stopping was also viable.

“What we did [was] to put some more effort, some more laps, on the high fuel runs on race simulations to make sure that we had the right balance for the race,” explained Ferrari team boss Mattia Binotto. “And I think that later in the race, [with] the balance of the car, the drivers' capability made the difference overall in terms of first stint pace and overall race distance speed.”

But there’s plenty to cover until we get there, including how all races actually get going: the start.

Verstappen fended off Perez into Turn 1 and was never headed thereafter aside from in the pitstop phase

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Here, the Red Bulls launched off the front row in unison, but with Perez enjoying a better second phase of acceleration – enough to put his nose down Verstappen’s inside for the 90-degree left-hander. But it wasn’t a serious move and the world champion easily swung through the corner and headed off into a lead he would never lose other than in the pitstops cycle.

Leclerc maintained third, while team-mate Carlos Sainz fell back behind Mercedes’ fast-starting Lewis Hamilton from fifth. This would end up being critical to the outcome of Leclerc’s race. But that’s getting ahead once again, with the focus soon being lap one’s Turn 5 long left-hander – reprofiled for the 2021 race and the scene of Verstappen’s controversial championship-winning pass last season.

Here in 2022, Leclerc had a brief look inside Perez’s inside but, again, the move wasn’t really on. But Leclerc’s line meant Hamilton was soon closing in on the subsequent main back straight – with Sainz likewise powering up behind. At the Turn 6 braking zone for the chicane that breaks up the Abu Dhabi track’s two main straights, Leclerc had used his skinnier rear wing compared to the drag-ladened Mercedes to scamper just clear enough to be unruffled, while Sainz made a late move to pass Hamilton on the inside.

It was rather similar to Verstappen’s dive at the same spot in 2021, as was the outcome.

Mercedes ordered Hamilton to hand the position back to Sainz to avoid a possible penalty, which gave Leclerc a 1.9s buffer at the end of lap four

Hamilton had left space to the inside and when the Ferrari ran out wide towards the exit kerbs, the Briton bumped over these. He did so hard, briefly getting airborne and damaging his W13’s floor enough to “lose a little bit of performance”, with balance shifted unfavourably forward until a pitstop front wing adjustment later on. Hamilton maintained enough momentum through the runoff to rejoin having cut Turn 7 and stay ahead of Sainz.

All of this meant Verstappen romping to a 1.1s lead over Perez at the end of lap one of 58, and the second Red Bull in turn being 0.9s in front of Leclerc, went rather unnoticed. Instead, Hamilton continuing to threaten the lead Ferrari stole the focus, and he did so over the next two tours too.

During this stage, the stewards noted and then cleared Sainz over a possible ‘forcing another driver off-track’ infraction and then began assessing whether Hamilton had gained a lasting advantage by cutting Turn 7. As such, Mercedes ordered the seven-time world champion to hand the position back to Sainz to avoid a possible penalty, which gave Leclerc a 1.9s buffer at the end of lap four.

“It was really difficult, especially starting on the medium because obviously you do the first part of the race trying not to fight too much,” Leclerc said of his opening phase. “But obviously in the first few laps Lewis was quite close. He had to give the position back to Carlos. And then at that point, I could manage my tyres a little bit better. It gave me a little bit of breathing space. And then from that moment onwards, we did a great job.”

Sainz and Hamilton's opening lap exchange gave Leclerc breathing room and meant he could focus on management early on

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

At this point, the Red Bull drivers had commenced their own tyre management shifts at the head of the race – nursing the C4 mediums mainly in the mid 1m30s, bar Verstappen nipping into the high 1m29s on lap three. This had helped establish his lead gap at 2s once Leclerc was no longer vulnerable to Hamilton, with the Ferrari also facing essentially the same gap to Perez.

From laps six to eight, Verstappen and Perez logged near identical times in their preferred time bracket, with Leclerc slightly slower and fractionally more erratic over the same distance. But when Perez stopped being able to match Verstappen’s latest metronomic run in the 1m30.6s as they headed towards the end of lap 10, the gap between the team-mates grew.

It was 3.1s at that point, with Leclerc a further three seconds in arrears and Sainz that same margin back in fourth – now ahead of George Russell. The second Mercedes had made up for being passed by McLaren’s Lando Norris at the start having been baulked by Sainz into Turn 1, and then overhauled team-mate Hamilton and his hobbled car.

Hamilton had briefly headed Sainz again, having battled back by using DRS into the Turn 9 long, left-hand hairpin at the top of the track on lap five before Sainz in turn forged back ahead on the outside line at the same spot with DRS on lap eight. Here the race between the frontrunners essentially split.

Sainz and the Mercedes duo became also-rans as Sainz could not close in on Leclerc throughout the first stint and he used a two-stop strategy to the finish, where he led home Russell by 11.0s. The Briton’s race was compromised badly by picking up a 5s penalty at his first of two stops, where a long right-rear change was compounded by Russell being released into Norris’s path.

After this, Hamilton closed in on Russell before the younger Briton was pitted for a second time, with Hamilton frustrated at having to go to the end on a single service. Not that it mattered because, in the words of engineer Peter Bonnington, Hamilton’s loathed W13 “just gave up the ghost” when a lap 55 hydraulics issue meant he lost gearshifts and retired in the pits. Remarkably, it was the Silver Arrows squad’s sole 2022 reliability-induced DNF.

Their various travails would mean the podium battle was a contained three-horse race with just over a fifth of the race completed. From laps 10 to 15, although Leclerc’s gap to Verstappen would slip out to seven seconds, in this phase he began to gain vital ground on Perez.

The Ferrari driver was also reaping the reward of both Ferrari’s wing change choice and altering his driving style so that it “changed quite a bit overnight from Friday to Saturday”. “This paid off,” he explained in the post-race press conference, essentially referring to his mediums lasting for the same length as Verstappen, while Perez “died” on that rubber in fewer tours. Making this slightly easier for Leclerc was tyre degradation overall being less than Pirelli had predicted on Sunday in the cooler twilight running conditions compared to FP2.

Perez struggled with his right-front tyre in the first stint and pitted five laps earlier than Verstappen, with Leclerc going another lap further

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

“Checo just took a bit more out of the front right tyre,” Red Bull team boss Christian Horner explained. “And it just started to open up. Now, whether that was a slight difference of set-up or just different technique, we need to analyse.”

Red Bull therefore pitted Perez to take hards at the end of lap 15. That opened up the chance for Leclerc, who stayed out until lap 21 to do likewise after Verstappen had come in on the previous tour, to have a real shot at beating a faster car.

This was because Red Bull now faced, per Horner, the “prospect of either being a dying fly at the end of the stint or to try and attack – and we chose to try and attack”.

Red Bull’s cars – separated by 1.2s at the end of Verstappen’s out-lap due to the powerful undercut effect in a tyre management race and as he’d slid back to the mid-1m31s for the final three laps his first stint – were set on different strategy courses. But for Ferrari to exploit this difference, Leclerc had to force the issue and show good enough tyre preservation and pace to close a 6.2s gap to Perez once he’d ended his first hards tour.

On lap 29, Perez said he was “being held up by Max”. His point wasn’t that he was losing a possible race win against the Dutchman, but that Leclerc was now lurking very close behind

The race might have looked very different here had Perez not locked up passing the yet-to-stop Sebastian Vettel on his own out-lap. The Turn 6 gaffe meant he had to battle by the Aston again at the same spot a lap later instead and so did not head Verstappen when the leader emerged from the pits.

Clear in the lead, Verstappen was able to conduct the vital factor in making the one-stopper work and gently eased in his white-walled rubber. This was his much-preferred strategy as he’d come into the race lacking the second set of new hards Perez possessed, which reduced Red Bull’s tactical possibilities for its lead car given the C3’s much better durability.

“I brought them in quite nicely because I had a good gap,” Verstappen explained. “And at one point, I wanted to go a little bit faster, but we were still not sure if the tyre was going to hold on for the whole stint to the end. So, it was a bit of management to see if you could make it.”

This did, however, actually end up hurting Perez. From laps 22 to lap 31, he was never more than 2.4s adrift of his team-mate and running the turbulent air coming off the leading RB18 – still a factor no matter how this has been reduced for 2022.

After switching to his first set of hards, Perez couldn't make the best use of the undercut with a mistake passing Vettel and then was delayed in Verstappen's wake

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

Indeed, on lap 29, Perez said he was “being held up by Max”. His point wasn’t that he was losing a possible race win against the Dutchman, but that Leclerc was now lurking very close behind. On that tour, his gap to Perez was down to 2.3s from 6.2s after stopping.

It then closed to 1.5s by the start of lap 33 – at which point Ferrari made its most important strategy choice. This was to enact a “dummy pitstop”, per Binotto, which would have become a real second service for Leclerc had Perez stayed out on that tour. But with Red Bull wanting to give its driver a final stint attack rather than hold on with ancient hards, that’s what occurred.

As Verstappen was easing to a final victory margin of 8.8s – and seemingly so comfortable on his rubber efficiency drive that he could advise Perez, via engineers Gianpiero Lambiase and Hugh Bird, on how long the hards would really last – Perez now faced closing a 19.8s gap to Leclerc over the final 24 laps. Sainz and Russell would pit out of his way, but he’d also have to overtake Hamilton.

His attack on the Mercedes driver began on lap 45, by which time he faced a 10s deficit to Leclerc, who was asking for silence from Ferrari as he concentrated on avoiding wheel-slips and oversteer slides in his bid to get his rubber to last 37 tours to the flag, as well as not leaning on it too hard through the long-but-rapid Turn 3 right over the brow of sector one’s hill. But, again at Turn 6 Perez locked his left-front and slid deep while passing Hamilton in what should have been a simple move – although not as deep as against Vettel.

Hamilton gained enough ground back that, with DRS down the next curved ‘straight’, he could swoop around Perez’s outside into Turn 9 – a small spot of revenge for the Mexican’s own immense defending while assisting Verstappen’s title triumph here last year. On the next lap, Perez opted not to attack at Turn 6 and instead used DRS to Turn 9 to dive to Hamilton’s inside and finally move back into third place.

Now he was 9.6s behind Leclerc, but, having been homing in at nearly a second per lap in the first 10 laps of his third stint, Perez’s botched move on Hamilton had cost him 0.7s and a critical lap to complete the charge.

With 11 tours left, Perez’s challenge continued. But while his pace matched his post-third-stop times until the final few tours, he lost more time being held up at Turn 6 (where else?) on lap 56, having got the gap down to 2.8s as Leclerc’s rubber also got to the point he was concerned “front-locking started to become a problem” and it was “very easy to do a mistake”.

His race ultimately ended in retirement, but Hamilton played his part in delaying Perez too as they scrapped on the run to Turn 9

Photo by: Simon Galloway / Motorsport Images

At this point, with two and a half laps left to run, Perez encountered Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon battling over 13th. He had blue flags to lap the AlphaTauri first, but Gasly waited until he was well on the run to Turn 9 before pulling over, which earned a furious gesture from the driver of his former ride.

And Perez simply never got a chance to mount a move to rescue second, as Leclerc hung on by 1.3s at the flag – having never even been in DRS threat from the charging Red Bull.

“It was really tricky,” Leclerc concluded. “Especially at the end of the stint on the hard, even though we did really good management to be honest. It was a really perfect [strategy] execution from our side. I don't think we had the pace of the Red Bulls still and our goal from the beginning was to try and push Checo to do something different, which we did perfectly.”

And so, it can be said that five critical factors ended up sealing Leclerc’s second place in F1 2022.

For all Ferrari’s fine work to beat Perez, and indeed that should be important momentum for both the Scuderia and Leclerc heading into 2023 given the manner of how this result was collected with solid strategic work and masterful driving, Verstappen still dominated

By altering its wing level, Ferrari found the “very good balance of the car”, according to Binotto, while his charge “did very well” to execute the delicate tyre management exercise required across the tense-but-not-spectacular conclusion to this campaign. Then there was Perez’s time lost to his errors passing Vettel and Hamilton, plus the mess with now ex-stable-mate Gasly. But Perez felt one final factor was overriding.

“It was that second stint, while I was behind Max,” he explained. “Max was on a one-stop, I was on a two-stop, and then I ended-up not being able to maximise this stint. I couldn't push as much as we should have pushed on that second stint. We probably left two seconds on the table there.”

For all Ferrari’s fine work to beat Perez, and indeed that should be important momentum for both the Scuderia and Leclerc heading into 2023 given the manner of how this result was collected with solid strategic work and masterful driving, Verstappen still dominated.

In fact, there was one final late-race consideration – would the leader fall back to push Leclerc properly into Perez’s clutches as payback for the Brazil team orders angst?

Perez was never truly close enough to mount an assault on Leclerc's second place in the closing laps as the Ferrari man tied up second in the points

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Perez asked where his team-mate was entering the final five laps and was told “Max can’t give Leclerc DRS – [it] would just make it easier for Leclerc to defend against you” by Bird. In any case Verstappen felt “that is quite a tricky call to make” – of a request that never came.

“You can possibly block, but is that fair racing?” he asked in his 15th post-race press conference as a GP winner this year, extending the record he set in Mexico.

“I think [that’s] not the nicest way going out of the season like that. Like Checo said, that second stint, because the deg was quite high on the medium, in hindsight, probably as a team we could have pushed a bit more on that middle stint for Checo. But that's always easy to say afterwards. At the time, we thought that we had to be a little bit careful on the tyres.”

Verstappen managed his tyres to perfection to collect a record 15th win of the season

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images