Max Verstappen mounts Red Bull charge on Asian GPs

The inevitability of Max Verstappen winning the 2022 world championship could only be delayed for so long. He had a chance of taking it in Singapore (round 17 of 22) but the weekend rather got away from him. This was corrected in the most emphatic manner seven days later in a Japanese Grand Prix which almost didn’t happen.

Rain played a decisive part in what played out upon F1’s return to these classic two Asian venues after a three-year Covid-imposed absence. In Singapore, a slicks-shod Q3 on a drying track meant everyone was fuelled to run the whole session on a single set of tyres as it was essential to be on track at all times, so uncertain was the weather. The rain held off and each lap was whole chunks faster than the previous. This was the crucial backdrop to a rare Red Bull miscalculation, one which cost Verstappen an almost certain pole and left him starting eighth on the notoriously difficult-to-pass street circuit.

The team instructed Verstappen to abort his penultimate lap – which in hindsight would have been good for pole – because it could see that he otherwise would be baulked towards the end of the final lap, when the track was expected to be significantly faster. Although the aborted penultimate lap would likely have stood as good for pole, his final lap was indeed shaping up to be faster still – but that too had to be aborted because he otherwise was not going to have enough fuel left to give the required 1-litre sample to the FIA. The penalty for failure to provide this sample is usually disqualification from qualifying and a back-of-the-grid start. As a furious Verstappen drove into the pits uncomprehending at why he’d been asked to abort not one, but two, potential pole laps, he was left relying on his time from several laps earlier when the track was much wetter. Hence an eighth-place grid slot and only the narrowest of prospects of doing what was needed for the title – a race win and fastest lap if Charles Leclerc non-scored. Leclerc qualified his Ferrari on pole.

None of the top four on the grid – Leclerc, Red Bull’s Sergio Pérez, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz – completed error-free laps when the track was at its driest and Leclerc’s pole was from his penultimate lap and almost matched in the dying seconds by Pérez. A huge downpour on race evening delayed the start by an hour but the track was good for an inters-shod standing start by 9pm, and as Leclerc hit a damp patch part-way down the straight when still in second gear, Pérez surged into a lead he would retain for the two-hour duration of the race to take his second victory of the season.

Verstappen’s race was a frustrated, frenzied run to seventh place. An anti-stall-triggering start dropped him to an initial 12th, he picked off a few midfield runners while the track was equally damp on the line and off but an attempt at passing Lando Norris’s McLaren when there was a big difference in grip between the two sides of track resulted in a trip up the escape road and a set of flat-spotted tyres. This was just after a safety car and meant him rejoining at the back after stopping for replacement rubber. He began his recovery all over again and took places from Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel’s Aston Martin in the closing moments to take seventh. The title would have to wait for another day.

“Pérez did a great job under big pressure from Leclerc”

Up front, Pérez did a great job under pressure almost throughout by Leclerc. The Ferrari would fire up its tyres quicker than the Red Bull and in a race with two safety cars and three VSCs that made things especially intense for Pérez. But the flipside was that the Red Bull looked after its rubber better through the stint. There were a few laps after one of the safety cars where Leclerc was applying maximum pressure and Pérez got a bit ragged but it was eventually Leclerc who had a moment, this giving Pérez the breathing space he needed. All he had to do after that was use the late tyre advantage to pull out a 5sec gap on Leclerc as a precaution against a possible time penalty, as he was being investigated for having twice allowed more than a 10-car-length gap between the safety car and him to build up on restart laps. The penalty was duly awarded but without changing the result.

Sainz in third place struggled badly for pace in the intermediate-shod part of the race which comprised around half the race distance, so slow was the track to dry. By the time he’d found his confidence in the slick-shod part of the race he was a long way behind. He came under attack for a time from the fourth-place McLaren of Norris. The other McLaren of Daniel Ricciardo benefited hugely from being the last man on track still on inters and getting to benefit from a safety car, which allowed him to leapfrog many places after pitting to eventually put him fifth.

Sainz’s early pace had restricted Hamilton, who was afterwards adamant that he could otherwise have been involved in the Pérez-Leclerc struggle. A frustrated attempt at passing Sainz meant he nosed into the barriers, meaning a stop for a new front wing and the promotion of Norris. In his recovery he could find no way by the Lance Stroll-Vettel Aston Martin train and in trying to position himself to attack Vettel ran wide and allowed Verstappen by.

The forecast for Suzuka a week later was always rain for Friday, dry for qualifying on Saturday and mixed for race day. This presented a few dilemmas for the teams (see F1 Tactics), but Red Bull, Ferrari and Mercedes each committed to fairly high wing levels, with an eye to the race. Here, Verstappen could clinch the title if he took the victory so long as Leclerc wasn’t second with fastest lap. Either scenario looked feasible after qualifying in which Verstappen took pole from his rival by the margin of one-hundredth of a second.

Heavy rain had been falling for a few hours and although it had abated by the time the grid lined up on intermediates, no sooner had everyone set off on the formation lap than it intensified once more. As the lights went out Verstappen bogged down just as he had in Singapore and Leclerc, on the inside, was ahead as they raced into Turn 1. But Verstappen was in no mood for playing it safe and opted for the outside line, a longer way around the fast turn but in wet conditions, the gripper line as the tyres bite straight through to the Tarmac rather than the layer of rubber online. Using this to maintain greater momentum he was alongside and ahead of Leclerc on the approach to Turn 2, Leclerc obliged to give him room. The Ferrari tracked the Red Bull tight as they raced up through the Esses, Dunlop and the Degners – and even third place Pérez was a long way back already.

Visibility was appalling amid the spray and on the stretch between the hairpin and Spoon, Sainz in fourth place tried to move out of the spray of Pérez but in doing so put the Ferrari on a patch of deep standing water. The Ferrari instantly floated on its plank, out of control at around 150mph and bounced hard off the Turn 12 barriers and partly back onto the track. Driving almost blind, other drivers weren’t even aware Sainz was there. Hamilton and the others swept by inches from the front of the Ferrari, thankfully without hitting it. An advertising hoarding was thrown onto the track from the Sainz impact and this was collected by Pierre Gasly’s AlphaTauri. Adding to the danger of the moment, Alex Albon pulled his Williams off to the side with no power.

The safety car was sent out and Gasly made his way back to the pits to have the hoarding removed and his intermediate tyres replaced by full wets now that the rain was increasing. As the difficulty of removing the stranded Ferrari became apparent, so the red flag was shown. Gasly – many seconds behind the safety car-controlled pack on account of his pitstop – was just approaching the Sainz scene when the red flags came out and he was appalled to see the back of a recovery vehicle loom up out of the spray in front of him.

Two laps of racing had been completed so the three-hour clock in which a race must happen had begun counting down. With the rain falling hard, race control now waited to see if a window of raceable conditions would open before that time limit approached. Over two hours passed before the safety car was able to lead the wet-shod pack around for a rolling restart. This meant the race would time out in less than one hour, nowhere near enough time to fit in the full scheduled 53 laps.

“Gasly was appalled to see the rear of a recovery vehicle loom up”

Although the track was ready for intermediates almost straight away, the rain was beginning to increase again at the far side of the circuit so there was a general reluctance up front to come in immediately when the safety car pulled in. Verstappen and Leclerc took up where they’d left off, immediately going hard at it and leaving Pérez, Esteban Ocon’s Alpine, Hamilton, Alonso and George Russell’s Mercedes trailing in their cloudy wake.

Further back, both Nicholas Latifi and Vettel (who had been punted onto the Turn 1 grass at the first start after contact with Fernando Alonso’s Alpine) came in instantly. Their sector times were not immediately super quick, so most of the field remained out. The exceptions, on lap six, were Norris and the Alfa Romeo of Valtteri Bottas. By which time Vettel was setting purple sector times as the rain was fading and a drier line was beginning to emerge. Most of the remainder of the field came in on the next lap. Russell lost time and positions having to be stacked behind Hamilton. Alpine avoided a similar scenario with Alonso by leaving him out a lap later than Ocon, which was less costly than Russell’s stacking but still put him behind the early-stopping Vettel. Only Mick Schumacher stayed out, leading the race on his wets, Haas hoping for a safety car which never came.

Verstappen got past the Haas at an opportune time, just before Turn 1, to retake the lead. Leclerc had to follow it up the hill, allowing Verstappen to pull out time on the Ferrari. For the next three laps Verstappen and Leclerc were lapping 2sec faster than the best of the rest, leaving the Pérez-led field far behind. Then the Ferrari’s front tyres began fading dramatically – and Verstappen pulled away in a race of his own.

Pérez began to steadily haul in Leclerc while some way behind them, Ocon in the low-wing Alpine was doing a perfect defensive job in fourth, holding off Hamilton in the big-wing Mercedes. They would spend most of the race locked together, occasionally almost touching, but Hamilton could find no way past Ocon’s defences, with DRS not being enabled by race control in the conditions.

“The two world champions staged a brilliant dice for P6”

After his delay, Russell – with the same big wing on his Merc as Hamilton – made up a couple of places by passing at the unconventional place between Turns 6 and 7 at the top of the Esses. But this was against slower cars than Ocon’s Alpine. Russell was catching the Vettel/Alonso train fast and before it was too late Alpine – informed by Zhou Guanyu’s Alfa having just set what would stand as the fastest lap of the race on a set of brand new inters – decided to pit Alonso for a second time. Alonso’s new tyres were up to 4sec faster, allowing him to overcome the pit time loss very quickly, repass Russell and put himself back on Vettel’s tail. The pair of world champions staged a brilliant dice from there for sixth, and would cross the line side-by-side separated by 0.011sec, Vettel just ahead.

Pérez had caught up with Leclerc by the 22nd lap but the Ferrari driver was super-disciplined in his defences, the pair almost touching at times. With the three-hour limit approaching, lap 27 would be the final lap. Verstappen crossed the line 26sec ahead of the Leclerc/Pérez dice. As they braked for the chicane, Leclerc ran wide onto the escape area, rejoining still ahead and edging Pérez to the outside of the final turn, forcing him to back off. He was given a 5sec penalty for gaining an advantage by leaving the track and was thus an official third. This, together with full points being awarded despite only 50.9% of the distance being completed, secured Verstappen’s title.