Even if only the 2022 victories of Max Verstappen counted, he’d still be comfortably in the top 20 of all-time career race wins in the sport’s history. That’s how statistically dominant he was. He scored more Formula 1 wins in this one season than Graham Hill, Jack Brabham or Emerson Fittipaldi did throughout their long careers. But it was only in the season’s second half that the scale of his performance superiority matched the race win stats which were being notched up. In the first half it was often Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc setting the pace.
Neither the Ferrari team nor the car were quite robust enough to carry the hopes that the speed of the F1-75 forced upon them. Ferrari corporate politics being what they are, it led to the resignation of team principal Mattia Binotto at the end of the year.
Not that Red Bull’s season was without controversy in the year during which the team’s founding owner Dietrich Mateschitz died. The breach of the 2021 cost cap incurred a penalty and created questions around its 2022 dominance. But even if the £400,000 or so by which it was over (once allowance is made for the erroneous corporation tax input) were applied to 2022, it wouldn’t even begin to explain Verstappen’s blockbusting season. This was founded upon one of the most potent team/driver performances that Formula 1 has ever seen. And with the RB18, Red Bull provided the greatest driver of his generation with a near-perfect tool for the job. It was the car he’d always dreamed of… eventually anyway.
In the first part of the season it was as much as 25kg overweight. The new generation of ground-effect cars were heavy even by the lardy standards of the hybrid era. The groundeffect floor has to
