The standout F1 2022 weakness Verstappen still needs Red Bull to address

Elite sportspeople don’t think like the rest of us. The Olympic triple jumper favourite for gold unable to look at the silver they ultimately received. The quarterback picked in the lower rounds of the NFL draft motivated more to beat the teams that passed on them. Formula 1 drivers are of the same mould. And the best take it even further.

Max Verstappen’s reaction to winning last weekend’s French Grand Prix amid Ferrari and Charles Leclerc’s latest implosion demonstrated this well.

The Dutchman’s radio messages to his Red Bull squad after taking the chequered flag were… business-like. As were the few he received back from engineer Gianpiero Lambiase and team boss Christian Horner.

There is an operation for which winning is the expectation and losing is incomprehensible. It’s been like this for so long – even during Red Bull’s fallow years at the start of the turbo hybrid era, it could threaten Mercedes with slick strategies and smooth race operations (Monaco 2016 pitstop shambles notably aside).

Verstappen’s calm victory reaction continued into the post-race press conference at Paul Ricard. He arrived there a long time before Mercedes team-mates Lewis Hamilton and George Russell, with whom he had shared the podium.

Given they’d all been speaking to the TV crews after receiving their trophies, this reflected both how simple Verstappen’s race had been after Leclerc had binned his F1-75 and how pleased the Silver Arrows drivers were with their results. They were taken in a car that is still locked out of the podium places unless the something goes wrong for the top teams or one their drivers underperforms, as Sergio Perez did last weekend in the other Red Bull.

As he sipped his can of the energy drink his team exists to sell, Verstappen explained to press conference host Tom Clarkson how the late-race virtual safety car system failure in race control had manifested itself in the cockpit for those out on the track. He was happy, sure, but far from exuberant.

Verstappen's latest win was routine after Leclerc crashed out, and his reaction after the race was calm

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

And this was a driver that had just secured a 63-point lead over Leclerc – the new biggest gap between them of the season so far. It beats the 49 Verstappen had been ahead after winning in Canada and the 46 Leclerc had led by after his Australia domination that feels a very long time ago now…

The calmness at Red Bull reflects the focus required to succeed at the top level. It’s very boring to hear drivers and teams talk about taking things one race at a time, but it’s a wise psychological move to avoid complacency and minimise mistakes.

Verstappen has form in this area. Heading into the final races of the 2021 season, he spoke of his life “not changing” if his first title fight was lost. Intriguingly, that risked an element of complacency creeping in for those that supported Verstappen, but it also showed how he refuses to give any rival any potential edge.

The 24-year-old can’t be described as open with anyone outside the Red Bull camp – he’s far too canny and sensible. But he’s unafraid to front up to weaknesses or failures. That’s particularly evident when his team does, such as with its malfunctioning DRS in Spain – a consequence of Red Bull’s weight-saving extremes on the RB18.

Catastrophic driver errors aside, it doesn’t appear as if Ferrari can fix its in-race decisiveness weakness. But the added risk right now for Red Bull is that it might and suddenly secures a success string leading from poles that negates Verstappen’s advantage

That car is another brilliant creation from Adrian Newey and co. But it still does have one standout weakness. With the majority of 2022 now in the books, Ferrari clearly has superior pace over one lap – leading as it does 8-4 in the pole tally.

“We know that we have to find – especially over one lap – quite a bit of performance,” Verstappen said in response to Autosport’s question once the Mercedes drivers had arrived for the press conference (Hamilton carrying ice pops he then shared with Russell) regarding the pressure on Red Bull in qualifying even with such a big championship’s advantage.

The issue still stems from the RB18’s remaining excess weight, which is felt most at low fuel. But there is also the understeer the 2022 front tyres induce in the slow corners, which wrecks the balance Verstappen is after. This was made even trickier at Paul Ricard with Red Bull running its low-drag rear wing package in a bid to negate Ferrari’s continuing corner-speed advantage.

Red Bull's weight struggles mean Verstappen has lacked potency in qualifying trim relative to Ferrari and Leclerc

Photo by: Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Ferrari being able to generally qualify ahead naturally creates knock-on problems for Red Bull and is why the Scuderia’s team boss Mattia Binotto insists “there is no reason why not to win 10 races from now to the end”.

The red cars should therefore be considered pretty overwhelming favourites heading to Hungary this weekend, where the Budapest layout rewards high-downforce packages and makes passing difficult. It’s narrow, added to most of the 2.7-miles being corners, so represents another big test of F1’s new racing rules.

“Budapest, that's going to be a bit more of a struggle for us,” assessed Verstappen. “[That’s] where I think Ferrari is going to be really, really quick.”

The set-up compromises required for Spa’s long straights and fast corners should return the fight to more of the fine-margin balance between the two teams, as was the case in France. But the concern for Red Bull is that, race pace-wise, Ferrari is getting better.

Its tyre wear progress since its Imola and Miami defeats has now been confirmed – just look at how fast Carlos Sainz was on ageing mediums late-on at Paul Ricard (with the caveat that he was on a strategy off-set to the rest and Verstappen wasn’t under pressure up front). Ferrari’s pinpointed upgrade plan, with its forward floor reprofiled last weekend, seems to be working nicely.

“They probably learned quite a lot,” Verstappen said of Ferrari’s tyre wear progress this year. “But then also people are bringing upgrades and sometimes that also helps tyre degradation. [In the France race], even with them sliding around a bit, they were still very quick in front of us. It just shows that they have a very quick car.”

Pre-crash, Leclerc had also forced his rival to lose his tyre edge and start slipping off-track – the balance swinging in Ferrari’s favour in the tyre consideration even though Red Bull’s aggressive stop had secured Verstappen track position. It will never be known if Leclerc could’ve used a tyre life off-set advantage to overcome Red Bull’s fearsome top-speed down the Mistral straight.

PLUS: The 2018 Vettel rut Leclerc must avoid in F1 2022's title fight

Catastrophic driver errors aside, it doesn’t appear as if Ferrari can fix its in-race decisiveness weakness. But the added risk right now for Red Bull is that it might and suddenly secures a success string leading from poles that negates Verstappen’s advantage.

That feels like its verging on the preposterous, but then, even Red Bull couldn’t have predicted the Abu Dhabi saga swing that secured Verstappen’s 2021 title… No wonder he’s not getting carried away.

Verstappen knows if Ferrari can cut out the mistakes when they qualify ahead, his advantage could start to be eroded

Photo by: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images