Somin Bhattacharjee
|Published 09/04/2023
IMAGO / PanoramiC
Max Verstappen won the 2022 drivers’ championship by quite a comfortable margin. He retained his crown with four races to spare, but things were not so easy for him in the opening stages. Verstappen suffered DNFs in two of the opening three rounds, and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc won on both those occasions.
Unfortunately for Ferrari, their early season championship charge faded away gradually, due to mistakes made within their own camp. The biggest issue that plagued their 2022 season was the strategies they adopted, which seemed bizarre more often than not.
Many a time, Leclerc was in a commanding position to win a race or score a huge points haul, but Ferrari’s questionable decision-making spoiled his outing. These strategy blunders turned into a joke among fans, and it seems that even drivers got into the fun. Max Verstappen for one anticipated a Ferrari mess-up ahead of the 2022 Belgian GP.
In the recent documentary Max Verstappen: Anatomy of a Champion, the 25-year-old is involved in a conversation with other people about the possible weather conditions ahead of the 2022 Belgian GP. Since there was rain forecasted for the weekend, his entourage was contemplating if it was the best thing for him.
Verstappen was talking about rain being forecasted for the sessions on Friday and Saturday, to which he was asked if wet conditions were better for the race. Verstappen replied by saying that rainy conditions would be more chaotic. However, he preferred the dry condition, not because of it playing to his strength, but because he felt Ferrari had a better chance of messing things up.
😭😭pic.twitter.com/0g83I98Qyu
— RBR News 🇳🇱🇲🇽 (@redbulletin) April 9, 2023
“In the dry, Ferrari has more options to f*ck up the strategy,” the two-time world champion said.
Fans on Twitter found Verstappen’s comments absolutely hilarious, even though it seems as though the Dutchman was being serious about his prediction.
Ferrari’s woes in 2022 continued at the Belgian GP in Spa. By this time, the Red Bulls were much faster than the F1-75s, and even though Verstappen started the race from the back of the grid due to a grid penalty, he fought his way up to take the lead by lap 12.
A pit-lane speeding penalty at the end of the race capped a frustrating day for Charles Leclerc 😖#BelgianGP #F1 https://t.co/2G0GyD64yb
— Formula 1 (@F1) August 28, 2022
Leclerc, meanwhile, struggled to close the gap and was in fifth position ahead of the final lap, but elected to pit for soft tyres to take the fastest lap off Verstappen. This decision made by Ferrari spoiled Leclerc’s race even further as not only did he fail to get the fastest lap, he lost out on a position because of speeding on the pit-lane.
Ferrari and Leclerc never regained their momentum in the coming races, and Verstappen coasted towards glory along with Red Bull in the constructors’ championship.
Somin Bhattacharjee is an F1 writer at The SportsRush. He holds a bachelor's degree in business administration and aims to work in the sports industry for the rest of his life. Somin has been a fan of Scuderia Ferrari since 2010 and his favorite driver is none another than the great Fernando Alonso. Other than longing for a Ferrari Championship win once again, Somin spends his free time playing football and basketball.
Copyright: © RU Sport Private Limited. All rights reserved.
Copyright: © RU Sport Private Limited. All rights reserved.

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