The 2022 Formula 1 season has been a campaign of great transformation from the one that came before. This is epitomised in the start of the championship’s new era, with the ground-effects car designs that are already well liked and established.
There are of course similarities, too. The multi-team title fights F1 observers had hoped would return started off restricted to just two of what were already considered to be ‘Class A’ squads. Then, as the year has gone on, it has boiled down to just one top team: Red Bull. The slightest infraction of any racer still leads to bitter and divisive online arguments. But at the same time, F1’s postpandemic-restrictions boom continues unabated.
And then there’s Max Verstappen. His 2021 title-clinching circumstances were controversial, but even without such drama this time around the result is going to be the same: Verstappen will be the 2022 drivers’ champion.
The campaign has turned out to be centrally his story, the opposition falling away to mere subplots. But what else about the Dutchman’s 2022 tale is different from his first successful championship challenge? Plenty. And here we present those critical differences and consider how the driver himself has changed since becoming a car racing champion for the first time and on the grandest stage of all in 2021.
FERRARI, NOT MERCEDES, IS RED BULL’S OPPOSITION
Now that Verstappen is a whopping 116 points ahead of Charles Leclerc in the standings, it’s rather remarkable to remember that, leaving Australia after the third round, the Ferrari driver was 46 points clear of Verstappen (then sixth in the championship).
That stunning turnaround in Verstappen’s favour was of course predated by Ferrari, and not Mercedes a la 2021, emerging as Red Bull’s closest challenger. Ahead of winter testing, the central question was whether a team previously off the pace could lead the pack, combined with wondering whether the 2021 title challengers would be able to maintain their positions through a rules reset under a cost cap. Red Bull kept its potential as under wraps as ever during testing, where it was obvious that Ferrari was much stronger and Mercedes much weaker – all among the dominant porpoising talk.
The final runs in Bahrain revealed how dramatic Mercedes’ fall had been, with Lewis Hamilton and George Russell unable to stay fully on the gas in places where the Red Bull and Ferrari drivers were planted.
