After a third of the 2022 Formula One World championship, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is the leader with 125 points ahead of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix, as a result of four wins and two retirements.
In other words, when the Dutchman finishes the race, he practically always wins. Checo Perez, from being sacrificed as bait, was the only one to break the winning sequence between the world champion and Charles Leclerc. In fact, Monaco was a rather daring and casual race when it comes to the final result.
Charles Leclerc got five pole positions and only two wins. Between ups and downs – at least in this part of the season – the fight remains on a very subtle balance in a context of reliability that is anything but taken for granted. Ferrari started in great shape then the important comeback of the Red Bulls, then again Ferrari. Which often did not know how to transform the great results in qualifying into similar results on Sunday, as pointed out by Giuliano Duchessa for formu1a.uno.
Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc are just 9 points apart. The teams leave Barcelona and Monte Carlo with different state of minds: certainly Horner’s team smiles and it could not be otherwise. On the other hand, on the way back from Melbourne, the exact opposite happened.
Contrary to today’s celebratory mood, Red Bull has wasted more potential so far, considering the points lost by Max. It is strange to say however, excluding driving errors, if both had had zero retirements, today Max Verstappen would even be +20 on Charles Leclerc in the drivers standings, despite the clear Spanish victory for the Monegasque driver.
The Dutchman would have the frightening average points / race of 23 points, while the F1-75 challenger of Charles an equally impressive 20.15 points / race.
Max’s points / race average is still very high, that is 17.86, while Charles Leclerc’s has dropped to 16.57. The average with which the # 33 driver won a world championship at the last moment in 2021 was 17.98 against 17.61 for Lewis Hamilton.
So it is clear that for Charles the missed opportunities cannot continue.
Show your support for Scuderia Ferrari with official merchandise collection from Puma! Enter the online Puma Store and shop securely! And get your F1 tickets for every race with VIP hospitality and unparalleled insider access. Click here for the best offers to support Charles and Carlos from the track!
In any case, both have lost interesting opportunities for the championship, precisely because of reliability issues. Surprisingly, even in Milton Keynes they have valid reasons to regret something. Ferrari is perhaps still metabolizing the fresh missed opportunities but in fact, numbers in hand, it is still the Dutch driver who is the most penalized in terms of points lost.
Technically, the F1-75 faced the first 7 races in a rather stable manner in terms of performance. In recent weeks, the improvement in performance has perhaps put the Monegasque’s car back a bit ahead. Something that – especially in the race – seemed to be able to hang in a different direction from Imola. It is quite clear that Ferrari – after the first evolutionary step of 3 tenths – could have clearly won in Spain and very likely obtained an important double in the last race. It goes without saying that Barcelona was quite significant and Monaco could have been much less so. Nevertheless, it confirmed a supremacy when the problem of the technicians is how to perform in the medium-slow corners if the great weapon to make a good time is traction.
Leave a Reply