Red Bull’s Max Verstappen mathematically secured the 2022 Formula 1 world title thanks to his dominant win in last weekend’s Japanese Grand Prix at the Suzuka circuit. The Austrian side scored a one-two finish with Sergio Perez taking the second spot on the podium after a post-race time penalty for Scuderia Ferrari Monegasque driver Charles Leclerc. The race stewards felt that Charles had gone off-track and gained an advantage after locking up at the Turn 16/17 chicane, resulting in a five-second penalty which dropped him behind Perez and allowed to Dutchman celebrate the Drivers title at Honda’s home event.
The outcome of the Suzuka race mainly sums up Scuderia Ferrari’s 2022 Formula 1 championship: the Italian side suffered from every gremlin possible, from several power unit reliability issues, to poor strategic calls from the Maranello pit wall and a few driver errors from both Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz.
Despite the positive start to the 2022 F1 campaign, with two wins for Charles Leclerc after the first three rounds, Scuderia Ferrari gradually fell back and was not able to take the fight to Red Bull. Former F1 driver Ralf Schumacher recently said that it even looked as if the Maranello-based team didn’t want to be champions.
“One gets the impression that they really want Red Bull to become World Champion,” said Ralf Schumacher in order to point out the difficulties encountered during the season.
While most agree that Charles Leclerc could have been able to challenge Max Verstappen for the title without the technical problems in Spain and Azerbaijan, alongside the bad strategy decisions made by his team in Monaco, the UK and at the Hungaroring, Dutch racing driver who currently competes in the NASCAR Whelen Euro Series, Michael Bleekemolen, feels that Max Verstappen would in fact have won the 2022 Formula 1 world championship this season even if he drove behind the wheel of the F1-75 car, with the 25-year-old “making no mistakes”.
“I remember people all saying he wasn’t going to be a World Champion when we were three races on the road,” the 73 year-old driver said, as reported by GPFans – “You see with so many grands prix it was still possible. He made it by making no mistakes. We hardly ever see him make a mistake anymore. I don’t even want to say he had the fastest car, but he had a good car. I think if Max had been in the Ferrari, he would have been World Champion too.” – Michael Bleekemolen added.
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The 2022 F1 campaign does in fact feel like a big chance waisted by the Maranello team, who had the speed in the first part of the season to fight against the RB18, but was not able to capitalize on the pace of the F1-75 car, before eventually being outdeveloped by Red Bull in the second part of the year.
While the reliability problems would have also affected Max Verstappen at the wheel of the Ferrari F1-75 challenger, Michael Bleekemolen believes that the Dutchman “influences a team” in the same way as F1 legend Michael Schumacher had the ability to do in his dominant years with Ferrari:
“That is of course an accumulation of things; but Max influences a team. People start to work well for him, people become more alert. That also happened with [Michael] Schumacher in the past. Max could have achieved that there just like he did.” – Michael Bleekemolen concluded.
