Max Verstappen took his second success in a row by winning the Miami Grand Prix and broke the balance of alternating race victories between Charles Leclerc and the Dutchman. The safety car at the end of the Miami Grand Prix partly concealed the dominance of the first part of the race, when the Dutchman had managed to create a 7-second gap. The world champion also took the point for the fastest lap (54th) so now the Monegasque has a 19-point advantage in the standings. Not few, but after the Australian GP he had an advantage of 46 points.
The speed with which Max Verstappen is closing the gap is as worrying as the speed – no longer just on the straights – of Red Bull, transformed by the recent updates whicu also allowed the team to reduce the weight of the RB18 car. Some of the updates were brought to Miami, bust most of them were introduced in the Emilia-Romagna GP and proved decisive in earning them a hat-trick (pole, Sprint Race and race).
This means that Scuderia Ferrari needs a change of pace from the Barcelona Grand Prix, which takes place in two weeks at the Circuit de Catalunya. The Spanish Grand Prix therefore becomes very important for the Maranello team’s prospects for the rest of the 2022 Formula One season, as significant upgrades will arrive on the F1-75 car. And Charles Leclerc know ther are very much needed: “The updates will be fundamental for the whole championship. We hope to be able to take a leap forward in the next races. We struggled with the softer tires, in the end we were again competitive with the hard ones. And I also thought I could pass him after the restart, but Max had a better pace than mine”.
Scuderia Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto confirmed the updates for the race in Barcelona: “It will be an important package, but not the most important of the season. It will be a technical confrontation that will go on for a long time and it won’t be a single innovation that makes the difference. But I also think that at some point they will have to stop developing, otherwise it would not be explained how they do it with the budget limitations”. The reference is to the FIA checks on the costs for development: “We monitor the changes that Red Bull brings to each race and we estimate the costs: so far they have spent more than us”.
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After all, Max Verstappen’s statistics are scary: two retirements (Bahrain and Melbourne due to mechanical problems, not his fault) and three victories in five GPs. If he reaches the finish line he always wins. But Mattia Binotto is not worried: “The differences [between us and Red Bull] aren’t big, we are talking about two tenths of a second, which in Formula 1 isn’t much. Our developments will come, Barcelona is the new challenge. We have to make sure that everything we have planned works. As it has happened this winter. I am disappointed for not having won in Miami, but happy to be leading the two World Championships” – the Ferrari boss concluded at the end of the Miami Grand Prix.
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