As a safety car paved the way for a late race at the Canadian Grand Prix last weekend, Max Verstappen took responsibility again to win his sixth Formula One 2022 victory and further strengthen his title defense.
Currently hot, Verstappen is now about 46 points ahead of his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez, while Ferrari rival Charles Leclerc is three points behind.
This health advantage in the championship is reinforced by the recent implosion of Ferrari’s unreliability.
Leclerc suffered the final effects of the fragility of the Scuderia in Montreal as he took on new components of the power unit to be sent on a march to the back of the network.
This meant that it was mainly up to Carlos Sainz – still in pursuit of his first triumph in the league – to accept Verstappen’s challenge. Although the rain in qualifying created an irritating front row, with Fernando Alonso along with RB18 for the sprint in turn 1, his Spanish counterpart was the one who found himself within reach of the DRS from Verstappen.
Sainz did fail, but proved he could lead the battle against Verstappen after his astonishing adaptation to the ground effect. Mercedes, meanwhile, was backed as Barcelona after Lewis Hamilton finished the podium, finding an affinity with the troubling W13. Leclerc then stopped bleeding from points for Verstappen, recovering to fifth place behind George Russell, despite his own complaints in the cockpit.
With these titles and many more sub-stories generated by the 70-lap Gilles Villeneuve tour, here are 10 things we learned over the weekend in Canada.
Verstappen suffocated in the battle for the Formula One title in 2022 with a victory in Canada
Photo: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
1. The virtuoso victory confirms Verstappen’s flexibility
Seeing Max Verstappen take control of the weekend, as he did in Canada, doesn’t mean learning anything new. It was sewn perfectly together days ago. But his latest performance encapsulates and doubly emphasizes the breadth of his abilities.
This was clearly shown during a slippery qualification. With five minutes Q2 to go, Carlos Sainz turned 1m29.153s to climb to the top of the times. The next person above the line to mitigate the evolution of the track was Verstappen. He hit for 1m27.764s. This cavernous advantage of 1,389s and pole position reflect its superiority in insidious conditions.
He then showed a different way to win the next day. In Saudi Arabia, he outsmarted Leclerc for the DRS at the culmination of a fascinating battle. In Imola, he repaired the damage from the early unreliability of the RB18, and his journey to the top of the podium in Spain and Azerbaijan was certainly alleviated by the problems of Ferrari’s own engines. Adding a bowstring to his bow was the way he led from the front in Canada.
He immediately put Fernando Alonso in the shadows. He then bypassed the problematic radio, lower top speed and average tire speed deficit compared to Sainz. When the safety car artificially brought Sainz back into action after his one-stop strategy was interrupted, it created tension in late Miami-style racing, but Verstappen never seemed to allow victory to escape a la Sebastian Vettel in 2011 or 2019.
Verstappen hurried to reduce his march to a possible second title, naturally pointing out that the season was only a third. But when Ferrari gave moments that could be seen as “points lost from the championship”, what Verstappen did in Canada on his 150th GP start can be remembered as “the championship was won” .
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Ferrari equaled Red Bull in strategy and pace all the way to Canada
Photo: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images
2. Ferrari seems to have eliminated at least one of its shortcomings that cost a win
For the second consecutive race, Christian Horner hypothesized. In Azerbaijan, he was convinced that Max Verstappen had an advantage in the pace of fresher tires to overtake Charles Leclerc on the merit of victory before his engine exploded. Similarly, the Red Bull boss believes that the safety car did not intervene to let Carlos Sainz move forward on a one-stop-shop strategy, Verstappen again had enough to come behind and win.
The reason why Ferrari drivers are in these advantageous positions, at least in terms of track position, in the last two races is due to feline reactions to virtual safety cars (in Baku Leclerc immediately shot to stop when the hydraulics of Sainz’s failure neutralizes the race) and full-fledged safety cars (Sainz stands up in response to Yuki Tsunoda, who drops him off at the boxing exit).
In both cases, the other Ferrari did not fight for victory, leaving the wall without the luxury of dividing strategies between pilots to cover up threats. Twice he had to gamble and take the opportunity. Although the Scuderia did not win in either scenario, calls from both drivers and pitchers were much quicker than the cumbersome reactions in Monaco, who lost 1-2 before even a third of the race had passed.
The chances of getting the spoils in Baku were affected by the deficit of the pace of F1-75 before Red Bull, if the events took place in full. These chances were then erased by the engine failure for Leclerc. In Montreal, things were closer. Sainz had Verstappen’s pace for the last sprint with hard tires to the flag as he turned in the fastest laps and had the advantage through speed traps. But the red car fights outside of Turn 10, which Leclerc also endured, helped Verstappen move forward enough to survive the late threat from the DRS.
While Sainz missed out on victory if Ferrari ignored the changing picture and adhered religiously to his one-stop shop plan, the Spaniard would probably have been out of the dispute much sooner as Verstappen chewed the 9.5-second gap on 23 rounds. new tires with 24 laps for running.
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Former teammates of Toro Rosso, Verstappen and Sainz are not fighting for Formula 1 victories
Photo: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
3. Sainz should fight Red Bull more often
Carlos Sainz thinks he feels more at home in a lower-value Ferrari 2021 than in the more competitive 2022 Ground Racer. That, he says, explains his teammate Charles Leclerc’s difference in pace – with his crashes in Australia and Imola they don’t help at all.
But Sainz stepped up significantly to lead the fight against Max Verstappen in Montreal, with Charles Leclerc largely out of the picture thanks to penalties on the grid.
While Sainz pushed too hard in his last lap of Q3 to break the time in the final chicane and give way to Fernando Alonso’s front row grid, elsewhere he had the pace and was in the final stages of the Grand Prix with the fastest driver on the track. A point for the fastest lap is proof of that. And although victory came again, he had a close affair with Verstappen, taking advantage of the safety car to fight for difficulties.
With this stronger performance, Sainz has already made a stick for his own back. After the shocks in reliability, Ferrari has 76 points difference to get closer to Red Bull in the constructors’ championship race. Moreover, although Monaco looks like a peak for the time being, not a Sergio Perez nominee, the Mexican is still able to get closer to Verstappen’s benchmark this season.
As such, if Ferrari wants to reduce the gap with Red Bull in the most effective way, it needs Sainz to form half of a bilateral attack. Leclerc had previously played the lion’s share, but Sainz had already shown that he could take on the hard work. He must make his performance in Montreal the norm.
Leclerc climbed 14 places in the Canadian GP, but was still unhappy
Photo: Andy Hone / Motorsport Images
4. Leclerc may limit damage when necessary
Given the exceptional form that Max Verstappen is currently enjoying, Ferrari just needs Charles Leclerc to win races to reduce the points gap and tackle the exciting title battle we all want to see. . And in order for Leclerc to win races, he obviously needs a Ferrari to drive away his demons of unreliability. In any case, fifth place is not enough for Monegasque to do the job if its main rival continues to collect victories.
But his recovery from 19th place in the grid to 10 points in a race that had not been stirred by bad weather was a solid enough return as Leclerc returned the penalty at the back of the grid for a new engine. That stopped the loss on a day when Leclerc was hampered by a DRS train and a difficult differential that cost him dearly from turn 10 for the decisive tow to the last chicane.
Although this was an effective demonstration of limiting the damage, the unfortunate reality is that Leclerc will probably have to achieve such a performance, as Ferrari continues to pay for the consequences of the engine explosions in Monaco and Baku. With the powertrain launched in Azerbaijan, which Ferrari has identified as “beyond repair”, Leclerc is still on track to exceed the maximum permitted three turbochargers before considering hybrid elements and internal combustion plus any additional glitches.
Although Ferrari chose a passable Canada as a place to take the blow, knowing that not all is lost, the team will probably have to make a similar strategic call to let Leclerc fight through the cut and push of the package just to holding on to Verstappen’s coat.
Hamilton returned to the podium in Canada for the first time since the opening in 2022
Photo: Mark Sutton / Motorsport Images
5. Hamilton’s season is hurt by his own experience
Quotes from Canada gave the best idea so far about why George Russell arrived in Mercedes and seemed to have the measure of the seven-time champion, teammate Louis Hamilton at every turn. Untimely safety cars played a role in why Russell finished seven top races. But there is another important factor. Namely, as …
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