The seven factors powering Verstappen's 2022 F1 domination

The 2022 Formula 1 season has been a campaign of great transformation from the one that came before. This is epitomised in the start of the championship’s new era, with the ground-effects car designs that are already well liked and established.

There are of course similarities, too. The multi-team title fights F1 observers had hoped would return started off restricted to just two of what were already considered to be ‘Class A’ squads. Then, as the year has gone on, it has boiled down to just one top team: Red Bull. The slightest infraction of any racer still leads to bitter and divisive online arguments. But at the same time, F1’s post-pandemic-restrictions boom continues unabated.

And then there’s Max Verstappen. His 2021 title-clinching circumstances were controversial, but even without such drama this time around the result is going to be the same: Verstappen will be the 2022 drivers’ champion.

The campaign has turned out to be centrally his story, the opposition falling away to mere subplots. But what else about the Dutchman’s 2022 tale is different from his first successful championship challenge? Plenty. And here we present those critical differences and consider how the driver himself has changed since becoming a car racing champion for the first time and on the grandest stage of all in 2021.

After a toxic Mercedes vs Red Bull 2021, this year has seen a more courteous Ferrari vs Red Bull fight

Photo by: Alastair Staley / Motorsport Images

Ferrari, not Mercedes, is Red Bull’s opposition

Now that Verstappen is a whopping 116 points ahead of Charles Leclerc in the standings, it’s rather remarkable to remember that, leaving Australia after the third round, the Ferrari driver was 46 points clear of Verstappen (then sixth in the championship).

That stunning turnaround in Verstappen’s favour was of course predated by Ferrari, and not Mercedes a la 2021, emerging as Red Bull’s closest challenger. Ahead of winter testing, the central question was whether a team previously off the pace could lead the pack, combined with wondering whether the 2021 title challengers would be able to maintain their positions through a rules reset under a cost cap.

Red Bull kept its potential as under wraps as ever during testing, where it was obvious that Ferrari was much stronger and Mercedes much weaker – all among the dominant porpoising talk. The final runs in Bahrain revealed how dramatic Mercedes’ fall had been, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell unable to stay fully on the gas in places where the Red Bull and Ferrari drivers were planted.

The pecking order – even with Ferrari bouncing far more than Red Bull – was established quickly after at the first race. But it was Leclerc on pole, pipping Verstappen by 0.123 seconds, with Hamilton the top Mercedes driver and a massive 0.680s adrift. The race was closer, with Verstappen and Leclerc completing three thrilling duels for the lead before both Red Bulls dropped out with fuel pump failures.

“Every year is different anyway, in terms of who you’re fighting or a team you’re fighting,” Verstappen replies when asked about how 2022 differs from 2021. “But these cars are a lot more enjoyable to battle with.”

Ferrari’s time at the front has proved to be short-lived, for many different reasons. But the close, exciting Verstappen/Leclerc wheel-to-wheel scraps characterised the early rounds more than anything else. And the machines they were using in a fresh epic fight to follow Verstappen versus Hamilton are another key focus on how ‘Verstappen Title 2’ is different from the original.

The new generation of F1 cars has played a key role

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Racing is rather different in 2022

‘Raceability.’ This was one of five key areas the F1 organisation – supported by the FIA – set out to improve in the championship with the first big rules revamp of the Liberty Media-ownership era. That meant creating cars that could follow closely and in turn battle better and for longer than those from the ultra-high-downforce era that ended with Verstappen’s 2021 Abu Dhabi GP coronation.

Once the drivers had got to grips with the new machinery during testing in Spain and Bahrain, they were able to explain how the ground-effects cars felt and performed. The slipstream effect is reduced but, critically, ‘dirty air’ is thrown higher and away from a following car, enabling it to sit closer when racing. This means the drivers are having fewer (and less pronounced) sudden understeer snaps when closing on a rival.

But it has all meant that DRS trains stretch out from closely matched machines in the pack, until tyre degradation – different too in 2022, since a following driver doesn’t begin to slide with that sudden understeer, and thereby slows and wears out their rubber – kicks off the pitstop action.

“The last few years, the focus was a lot on qualifying because in some tracks, it was super-hard to follow and the cars just got a bit uncontrollable when you got really close, unless you had a big pace advantage or tyre advantage,” Verstappen says of overtaking action in 2022 versus 2021. “Now, you know that even if your qualifying wasn’t great, there is a chance that you pass anyway in the race if you have good race pace. That’s nice.”

Up front, particularly in those early-season rounds, the new cars have so far produced six thrilling scraps between Verstappen and Leclerc. The Ferrari driver came out on top in Bahrain, then dominated in Melbourne to avoid the pressure of an attack. Much later in the year, in Austria, he got the upper hand by making three passes for the lead. In Bahrain and Jeddah came the tactics of DRS use, a key part of their battles, with the knowledge that something could be saved if a pass doesn’t quickly come off against cars of similar pace.

Those contests revealed how the differing drag-level approaches of Red Bull (lower) and Ferrari (higher) meant top speed had added importance. Verstappen leads the battle tally 4-2, but there have been no ugly clashes between them.

Despite being rivals since their junior racing days, Leclerc and Verstappen have shown each other respect throughout their time in F1

Photo by: Glenn Dunbar / Motorsport Images

Verstappen racing Leclerc is different

That’s the essential takeaway. At this stage in 2021, Verstappen and Hamilton had crashed into each other twice – Silverstone and Monza – and had close calls at Imola and Barcelona.

At 16 races down in 2022, the closest Verstappen and Leclerc have had in terms of racing controversy came when the Red Bull star firmly saw his rival off track at Brooklands on lap one at Silverstone – but this was well within the new racing ‘guidelines’ the FIA had distributed to the teams ahead of the season.

There have been other interesting officiating changes for 2022, such as Verstappen’s tactic of aggressively moving alongside Hamilton at the late-race restart in Abu Dhabi last year being outlawed from the Melbourne event. And this all combines with Verstappen understanding from the Jeddah 2021 race that overly aggressive defensive moves along the lines of Turn 4 at Interlagos last year are not permitted (and never should have been).

Added to the officiating changes is the fact that Verstappen entered the 2022 season with seven penalty points hanging over his future conduct thanks to his 2021 transgressions.

Direct questions on whether he is indeed racing Leclerc differently to Hamilton are deftly batted away by all parties. Therefore, we can assess from the outside what has been different in Verstappen’s 2022 racing and match this with what we know of his attitude to change.

In 2018, he refused to admit he’d altered anything in his approach after a string of early-season gaffes culminated in his Monaco FP3 crash and finishing ninth in a race won by team-mate Daniel Ricciardo. But Verstappen’s improvement thereafter was clear.

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The same, it seems, has happened in his 2022 racing decisions – albeit with evidence of different choices. Verstappen had the chance to run Leclerc off in Bahrain and Austria but did not, in the latter instance perhaps because his comfortable points advantage meant he didn’t need to prevail on every piece of track.

There are still flashes of that old extreme aggression – and maybe that will return full-time if Hamilton and Mercedes do get back to becoming as close an opposition as they were in 2021. Also, at Silverstone, Verstappen’s late defence (with a hobbled car) over seventh against Mick Schumacher made no sense given Ferrari was at the same time depriving Leclerc of yet more points.

But perhaps that final note offers a vital reason why 2022 hasn’t been as ugly as 2021: did Verstappen sense that Ferrari would offer weaker opposition overall than Hamilton and an on-the-pace Mercedes?

Leclerc crash from the French GP lead was a hammer blow to his title hopes

Photo by: Carl Bingham / Motorsport Images

Leclerc has made some errors

In their Bahrain and Jeddah duels, Verstappen had no way of knowing that Ferrari would implode so spectacularly. But his willingness to go up to the line and not over it does suggest an altered approach.

Furthermore, there is something in the ending of an era from a competitor’s perspective that is almost gladiatorial and territorial that we must take into account – the sense that ‘I’m the King now’.

Not that he’d ever admit it, but that could well have been a factor in how Verstappen raced Hamilton. The seven-time world champion’s speed and relentlessness in an era when overtaking was that much harder thanks to the previous car designs meant that only an overwhelming approach would ultimately win out.

Whether he’s altered his racing attitude against Leclerc or not, Verstappen actually hasn’t had to repeat his own relentless battling drives from 2021 this time around, because Leclerc has erred while Verstappen has ended up close to perfect from a ‘complete driver’ perspective.

His most dominant displays have been when he and Red Bull have been in their own class – in Hungary and Belgium and, to a slightly lesser extent, the Netherlands and Italy.

Overall, the Red Bull RB18 just can’t match the Ferrari for outright qualifying speed, which is also Leclerc’s best attribute. So, there’s no shame in Verstappen having four poles to his rival’s eight and counting. But too often over a grand prix distance, Leclerc has let himself down and lost valuable points.

His Imola off in the rain chasing Sergio Perez was almost understandable. Ferrari’s dry-weather tyre management weakness against Red Bull had been exposed in the first of two (and also counting) Verstappen sprint race wins the day before, then its 2022 start issues were laid bare in the GP’s wet getaway.

Leclerc’s tiny misjudgement cost seven points, but his chase against stronger opposition was valiant. His Paul Ricard crash was something else.

Just as he had forced Verstappen’s rapid Red Bull off the best strategy, Leclerc blew his big chance to strike a major blow back in a title race that was getting away. That, more than anything, felt like the moment the contest was over.

But Leclerc’s one big error is actually better so far compared to the two Hamilton made over the same run in 2021 – the Briton’s Imola gravel disaster and Baku brake-setting mistake. What has cost more points and made Leclerc’s France crash so devastating was how Ferrari badly let him down again and again, to that point and after.

Ferrari's race strategy calls have been questionable at best

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images

Rivals drop the ball on strategy, Red Bull aces it

There’s a plurality to the sub-head above, but this difference from 2021 centres mainly on Ferrari. Mercedes’ biggest mistake has been the W13’s overall concept, which is still lacking to the leaders even though the worst of its porpoising issues have been addressed (although let’s see come the bumps of Singapore and Austin!).

Even so, the Silver Arrows’ late-Zandvoort strategy calls are worth examining here because they ultimately cost Hamilton the best result he could have achieved in that race, while Russell took second. But Verstappen was really untouchable once the brief threat of Mercedes’ one-stopper being successful had been thwarted by the safety car period.

There, Red Bull’s on-the-fly decision-making to take soft tyres immediately was spot-on. Unlike early in 2021, where it lost in Spain by not being as aggressive as it learned to be in France three events later, Red Bull has had strategy sharpness nailed this year.

Ferrari hasn’t – by some margin. Miami, Spain, Baku and Canada were lost contests for Leclerc thanks to a combination of weaker tyre preservation on softer compounds, which still holds true despite Ferrari’s race pace prowess outlier in Austria, and bad reliability. Monaco and Silverstone were lost to Ferrari’s baffling strategy calls.

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In the latter, as was briefly the case in the Austria sprint, team orders challenges arose too with Carlos Sainz, finally at ease in the F1-75. Then, most famously, came the call in Hungary to put Leclerc on that race’s hard compound, meaning he ended up losing pace and a race that Ferrari should have won to a charging Verstappen, despite the Dutchman spinning.

“We were not particularly great on Friday,” Verstappen says of his Hungary victory, where another Red Bull improvement was also highlighted. It has generally been successful in engineering its way back from tough starts (such as Verstappen’s Netherlands FP1 gearbox failure) and not lose its way. Weekend set-up evolution was Red Bull’s undoing at some 2021 events – think Turkey.

“We made a few changes and the car was in a better window,” Verstappen says of Red Bull’s Hungary transformation. “But still, it was a close fight for pole. In the race it was basically just being patient and just applying the right strategy to get through the field.”

At times this year Verstappen has appeared untouchable with his race pace

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

Verstappen’s tyre management mastery

For all our talk of 2021 vs 2022, now we’re going to go back to 2020. That was yet another year of Hamilton/Mercedes domination but, in race after race, Verstappen was the only driver able to stay anywhere near close to the Briton and Valtteri Bottas. For all the accurate assessments of Hamilton’s tyre management mastery matching with his speed and racecraft to earn all those titles, Verstappen has reached a similar level.

“I think I’m always good on tyres,” he said after dominating at Spa. “Maybe people don’t look at it. It’s just understanding, experience – trying to set up the car in the best way possible. And sometimes the car reacts better to it and sometimes not. I think when you look at, for example, Austria, we weren’t that great. But we learned from that and we tried to apply that. If the car sometimes is that good, everything becomes easier.”

There’s a discernible note of underappreciation above – not that Verstappen is one to want his every talent constantly praised, just listen to how engineer Gianpiero Lambiase talks to him over the radio. Perhaps it’s because team-mate Perez is the driver many people consider F1’s ‘tyre whisperer’. If it is, let Verstappen’s destruction of a team-mate who cannot replicate his results now that the RB18 is lighter and less prone to understeer dispel that image.

Verstappen hated his car’s early-season understeer, which was exacerbated by a compound construction aberration with the 18-inch tyres that Pirelli is committed to fixing for 2023. It meant the car’s balance was not as pointy as he loves, caused by Red Bull being unable to move its ballast around to assist handling because the RB18 was understood to be as much as 30kg over the 2022 weight limit.

That also meant Verstappen struggled to get up to speed on a weekend as quickly as Perez, and this led to his qualifying defeats in Jeddah, Monaco and Baku, although in the Principality Verstappen was set to beat Perez’s time and start alongside Leclerc, which would have significantly altered the perception of the pair’s rivalry at that stage.

While the RB18 has been at the head of the class, Red Bull has also ironed out its early reliability woes

Photo by: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images

Red Bull’s strong car design philosophy

Although it has taken engine change penalty pain on Honda’s advice at recent events, Red Bull has successfully fixed its early-2022 reliability struggles, where the Bahrain woe was followed by Verstappen’s unrelated additional fuel system issue in Melbourne. Now he also has a wider power unit parts pool after Honda’s concerns about internal combustion engine durability.

Ferrari has also had to take grid drops on that front, after Leclerc’s engine failure misery meant a lost Spanish GP win in the aftermath of Verstappen’s mistake and another (albeit smaller) victory shot disappearing in similar circumstances in Baku.

Red Bull’s reliability improvement is one thing but, now that it has hit the weight limit and can adjust Verstappen’s balance more easily, he feels that the RB18 does not have any “real weaknesses”. Additionally, he and Red Bull know “at some places we are stronger than others”.

“On a high-downforce track it’s a bit of a more difficult situation to get the best out of our package,” Verstappen said after winning at Zandvoort – a high-downforce-requiring track that split his triumphs in low-drag-favouring Spa and Monza. “But I think if you look at the whole season, you have more tracks with kind of medium downforce levels, and I think our car is very efficient.”

Here, Red Bull deserves serious credit. Unlike in the last era, where it regularly found itself only able to challenge at tracks such as Monaco and the Hungaroring with its high-downforce prowess, now it can challenge at all venues with a versatile car that is boosted by its potent engine power and low-drag concept. This was Mercedes’ previous strength, which Ferrari now lacks. Even on weekends where it can match Red Bull, its other failings mean it requires perfection.

“I’m not sure you can take an extrapolation of this year’s performance and say that it will be of benefit to us next year,” Red Bull chief engineer Paul Monaghan said at Monza. “We’ve got to absorb the [coming] regulation changes for the floor edge heights, and the stiffness change, without necessarily losing as much as our opposition. Then developing at the same rate. And then we will still be competitive next year.”

Verstappen's Italian GP win saw him put one hand on the F1 world championship

Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool

What difference will 2023 bring?

A team as well run as Red Bull is rightly already looking to how it can win again next year, using its efficient and adaptable RB18 design as a strong basis. F1’s fear is that it will now run away from its rivals, Ferrari having missed its shot and Mercedes still recovering. Given the state of the 2022 drivers’ title ‘fight’ right now, plenty will be hoping for change in 2023 in any case.

For Verstappen, he surely can have no complacency fears. Perhaps his dominant form in 2022 is evidence that, despite saying winning the 2021 title would not “change my life”, becoming a world champion has provided the pressure-release boost it can in the best drivers. They are then driven to win again and again.

Finally, consider Zandvoort once more. With no chance of a final race decider, the fanatical home fanbase provided the biggest pressure test of Verstappen’s season. Autosport watched him climb from his car on the pre-race grid, the grandstands roaring and bouncing. He didn’t so much as look at, let alone acknowledge, the chaos on his behalf. He is chilled and focused on winning, and it benefited him brilliantly that day and on so many others this year. And Verstappen doesn’t show any sign of letting up on his 2022 success streak…

Was the 2021 title win the pressure valve release for Verstappen's dominant 2022?

Photo by: Erik Junius