Red Bull’s Max Verstappen won the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve and can definitely be said that he has gained a significant lead in the Drivers Standings to make him the clear favourite for the title. After winning six out of nine races, he has an impressive 19.44 points / race average. Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc is losing an average of over 5 points per race, as pointed out by Giuliano Duchessa and Piergiuseppe Donadoni for formu1a.uno.
The Dutchman is driving perfectly, is always in control and never goes over the limit. You are seeing the emergence, perhaps for the first time in Max Verstappen’s career, of the experience which is needed to win a Formula 1 world championships, rather than the aggressive side of him we have been used to. We are therfore noting another phase in Max Verstappen’s career, a driver who knows how to read the key moments of a race and manage them with authority. A skill specific only to the best.
Despite the constant weight reduction, the RB18 was not the fastest car on Sunday. And also for this reason Max Verstappen deserves a perfect rating for the Canadian Grand Prix, for having led the weekend in an impeccable way. The car – as in Imola – gave important signs of superiority when it was necessary to take advantage of the intermediate tire at certain temperature conditions. This is because the front axle of Adrian Newey’s car is able to trigger softer tires earlier and better, quickly raising temperatures to the ideal operating window.
The light rake also helps in this, when compared to the Ferrari F1-75. While in the race it suffered a bit of graining, albeit to a lesser extent than Australia, which forced Christian Horner’s team to pass to a two-stop strategy.
In the race, on a clean and dry track, the situation was different. Carlos Sainz’s Ferrari was undoubtedly the best car in race pace, the most balanced car in each phase. The Spaniard’s pace was really good, 2 tenths clear of Red Bull. In some phases it could have been even more, but he was unable to show it, especially on hard tires. However, Red Bull is confident that Max Verstappen would have won the Canadian Grand Prix even without the safety car at the end of the race. “All the measurement data we have shows that he would have caught up with him and passed him about ten laps before the end,” Christian Horner said at after the Canadian Grand Prix, questioning Ferrari’s single stop strategy.
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With that in mind, it must also be said that Ferrari sent Carlos Sainz’s F1-75 car on track with a set-up compromise that, using the standard rear wing with medium load and the less efficient generation, proved to be extremely effective on tires, just like was the case for Charles Leclerc in Melbourne. Carlos’ overall balance was visibly better than that of his teammate, this is obviously because the Ferrari drivers needed different approaches given their starting positions at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve. The Monegasque driver needed a higher top speed to make as many overtakes as possible in the first stint. The design of the new wing provided a gain of only 3 km / h with DRS closed but 7 km / h with the flap open, which is the equivalent of a tenth and a half on the long straight in the third sector, demonstrating that it is mainly a wing calibrated for the fast corners of Silverstone.
The Maranello engineers were only able to install it on Saturday on the F1-75 car of Charles Leclerc, because Ferrari could only bring one part in Canada on Friday evening from Italy. However, having not been able to test it in the first two hours of free practice, the mechanical and aerodynamic balance was evaluated through the simulation data. Which could not have been ideal because the final tuning can only be achieved on the track. This aspect put Charles Leclerc in slight difficulty during the first stint when exiting the corner, especially when he was behind Esteban Ocon. The Alpine driver at that stage had tires 20 laps fresher than him.
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