Former Scuderia Ferrari driver Eddie Irvine feels that the Maranello team should impuse orders like those from his days are in order to protect Charles Leclerc and give him more chances of beating Max Verstappen in 2022.
The Monegasque driver and the 2021 F1 world champion have established themselves at the front of the grid in this start of the 2022 Formula 1 season, with some great wheel-to-wheel battles in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia, with one race win for each. The Australian Grand Prix was then a dominant display for Charles Leclerc, who won the race at the Albert Park circuit with a big gap to his closest opponent and also took advantage of Max Verstapen’s DNF.
As a result, Charles Leclerc leads the Drivers’ Championship ahead of the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix with a solid 34-point advantage over George Russell, with Max Verstappen down in P6 for now, having retired while running in second place on two occasions in the first three races of the season, due to engine issues.
As for the other side of the Red Bull – Scuderia Ferrari battle, Sergio Perez took pole in Jeddah, but was not able to capitalize on it due to a poorly-timed Safety Car from his perspective. The Ferrari driver took advantage and passed him at the pits to secure a double-podium finish even on a day in which Red Bull were very fast.
In Australia though, Red Bull came nowhere near close to Charles Leclerc, as Sergio Perez did not have the race pace to threaten the Monegasque driver and finished P2, more than 20 seconds adrift. Carlos Sainz, meanwhile, has not hidden his frustration over the start of the new campaign, with the Australian GP proving a disaster after he started the race from P9 and had to retire on lap two due to a mistake while trying to recover the places he had lost after the first few corners of the Australian Grand Prix.
Eddie Irvine, though, feels that Carlos Sainz is more likely to cause problems for his team-mate in the title fight as compared to Sergio Perez and Max Verstappen. This is why his advice for Scuderia Ferrari boss Mattia Binotto would be to set strict team orders to protect Charles Leclerc, as was the case for the former racing driver from Northern Ireland when he partnered Michael Schumacher at the Maranello team.
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For now, Mattia Binotto has confirmed that Charles and Carlos are free to fight for positions: “This is a problem for Charles because Sainz, who is number two, can occasionally find himself in front of him,” Eddie Irvine said, in a recent interview for Italian daily newspaper La Gazzetta dello Sport – “If I were Mattia [Binotto] I would give precise orders, as in my day, because beating Verstappen is already tough. If you then have also a team-mate who can snatch points away from you… As for Perez, in normal conditions he can’t beat Max.”
The two retirements which Max Verstappen suffered in Bahrain and Australia were beyond his own control, but the former Scuderia Ferrari driver thinks that in general Max Verstappen, while being the fastest driver in Formula 1, is more prone to errors. As for Charles Leclerc, Irvine feels the Monegasque driver does not make such mistakes: “I don’t think there is anyone faster than Verstappen, but he still makes a lot of mistakes and Leclerc doesn’t,” he concluded.
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