Formula One: History awaits Max Verstappen after leaving Lewis Hamilton, and the rest, in his wake
Barely halfway through Max Verstappen’s maiden title defence, the Red Bull star is threatening his own period of invincibility – and on an even grander scale than Lewis Hamilton.
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The F1 world celebrated when Max Verstappen unseated Lewis Hamilton as the world’s best driver after four years of predictable dominance in his all-conquering Mercedes.
But barely halfway through Verstappen’s maiden title defence, ‘Mad Max’ is threatening his own period of invincibility – and on an even grander scale.
The folly of thinking anyone can chase down Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship this year was laid bare only one race returned from the northern summer break, when the 24-year-old drove from 14th on the grid to win the Belgian Grand Prix at a canter.
He became the first driver in history to win consecutive races having started 10th or lower on the grid and the ease with which he cut through the field at Spa had eyes drifting ahead to the remainder of the schedule and what he might produce.
“Max was quite simply in a league of his own,” said Red Bull principal Christian Horner after Verstappen gapped teammate Sergio Perez by 17 seconds to win at Spa.
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Horner has headed Red Bull since 2005 and always considered the team’s breakthrough 2010 Constructor’s Championship victory, when Sebastian Vettel clinched his first of four world titles in Abu Dhabi, as his favourite moment.
Not even Verstappen’s coronation last year rated as such on Horner’s radar. But after the performance at Spa, and what his number one driver is building this season, there is an air of history being made.
“That’s one of our biggest-ever team performances … with Checo right there as well – fastest lap and one-two finish, it could not have been better for us,” he said.
“An amazing performance, right up there with the very best that we achieved back in 2010.”
It was three years later when Vettel set a new benchmark of nine consecutive race victories, from Belgium to Brazil, and equalled Michael Schumacher’s record of 13 wins in a single season.
With eight races to run in 2022 Verstappen has a chance to break both records and on form, anything is possible.
The Dutchman took consecutive race wins into the northern summer break and upon resumption last weekend the Red Bull car looked to have only pulled ahead of its rivals at Ferrari and Mercedes, as Verstappen notched three on the trot.
He now sits 93 points clear of teammate Sergio Perez in the Drivers’ Championship with 216 points still up for grabs.
After Red Bull’s one-two finish at Spa, Mercedes principal Toto Wolff mused “the championship will be concluded in Europe, probably”, suggesting the Constructors’ could be won and done at Monza in 10 days’ time.
While not mathematically possible, Wolff’s concession was telling of the feeling within the paddock that Red Bull and Verstappen look simply a class beyond the rest.
A win at his home Dutch Grand Prix this weekend would take Verstappen’s season total to 10 victories and edge him closer to a second consecutive Drivers’ Championship, which on-form could be wrapped up as soon as Suzuka.
The US Grand Prix two weeks later is the earliest he can pass Vettel and Schumacher’s season wins benchmark and the following week, in Mexico, he could equal the German’s consecutive win streak.
History awaits Verstappen and the scary thing is, at 24, he may only just be getting started.
“With these younger drivers, it’s when they burn out,” says F1 legend Martin Brundle.
“Lewis (Hamilton) and Fernando (Alonso) haven’t, incredibly, but I think some of them do. But we’ll see with Max, how long he can keep that intensity up.
“But I also sense it’s so much easier for him now, it’s not even taking that much out of him.”
FAMOUS DOOHAN NAME TO CAPITALISE ON F1 CIRCUS
The son of an Australian motorsport icon could become the big winner in the all-Australian F1 contract circus with Jack Doohan being tipped as a potential bolter to secure the vacant Alpine drive in 2023.While Daniel Ricciardo is appearing less and less likely to secure a full-time drive in 2023 and fellow Australian Oscar Piastri awaits a ruling that will decide if he replaces Ricciardo at McLaren next year, the biggest beneficiary could yet be Doohan.
Doohan, the son of five-times world motorcycle champion Mick Doohan, is currently the next driver in the emerging talent ranks at the Alpine Academy and is coming off his debut F2 race win at the Belgian Grand Prix last weekend.
Not only has there been suggestions Doohan, and not Piastri, could take the mandatory F1 reserve driver practice sessions Alpine must complete at two events this year, but he has now been suggested as a potential permanent driver in 2023.
Former F1 driver Marc Surer told the F1 Nation podcast that rumours linking Pierre Gasly with a move from Alpha Tauri to Alpine will not work, mainly because of a recent falling out and simmering rivalry with fellow French driver and Alpine’s No.1 man Esteban Ocon.
And while Ricciardo has been linked with a return to Alpine, he raced with the outfit when they were Renault from 2019-2020, Doohan is another name Surer keeps hearing mentioned as a potential full-time driver next year as he rises up to fourth in the F2 championship in his first season.
“Two French (drivers) together, it cannot work,” Surer told the F1 Nation Podcast.
“I think they already have a history racing against each other. It will not work well but for Alpine it should not matter if they like each other or not.
“For me, after what happened, Alpine could take Jack Doohan or somebody, like an upcoming star.
“Maybe we have a surprise. We just watched him in Formula 2 and think he’s improved a lot. He’s in a good way.”
Doohan told Speedcafe.com earlier this week he would be prepared to step into F1 practice sessions later this year if Piastri is cut by Alpine when the Contract Recognition Board hand down their decision from last Monday’s meeting as early as Wednesday night.
If Piastri is confirmed as moving to McLaren, Alpine could opt to cut ties with the reigning F2 champion and promote Doohan to the 60-minute practice sessions every team must complete at least twice in a season with a reserve driver.
“I don’t really know what’s going on,” Doohan told Speedcafe.com
“I know a lot is going on, but it’s really none of my business. I am focusing on my campaign ahead and currently, that’s Formula 2.
“If the opportunity arises to do a few FP1s for the remainder of the season, that would be amazing.
“But I have quite a job to do for the rest of the season, to ensure that I can finish as high up in this (Formula 2) championship as I can, and then I’ll worry about that (F1) when it comes.”
Danny Ric’s chances firm for new drive
—Callum Dick
Mick Schumacher and Nicholas Latifi are expected to vacate their respective seats with Haas and Williams at the end of the Formula 1 season, freeing up a further two places on the grid for Daniel Ricciardo – if he is interested.
Ricciardo’s future has been the subject of much speculation since he confirmed a split with McLaren a year early prior to the Belgian Grand Prix.
The West Australian has just eight drives remaining with McLaren to sell himself to prospective teams for 2023 and it wasn’t a promising first outing at Spa, finishing 15th.
With the FIA Contract Recognition Board (CRB) meeting this week to rule on McLaren and Alpine’s contract dispute around rookie Australian Oscar Piastri, the result of that hearing looms as a key domino for driver movement over the second half of the season.
Reports out of Europe claim Piastri is no longer Alpine’s preferred driver to take the seat of the outgoing Fernando Alonso and that the French team hopes to use any funds from winning the contract dispute with McLaren to buyout Pierre Gasly from his AlphaTauri deal.
Ricciardo was initially linked to a return to Alpine, for whom he drove in 2019-20 as Renault, however Gasly is considered the paddock favourite to partner Esteban Ocon and form an all-French connection.
That left very few options open for Ricciardo in 2023.
But now with news that Schumacher and Latifi are not expected to remain with Haas and Williams beyond the 2022 season, the door is ajar for the Australian to find a new home.
However it’s unclear whether Ricciardo would be interested in either seat, with neither Haas or Williams fielding particularly competitive cars and the Australian bullish in his belief he still wants to compete for world championships.
Alpine loomed as his only seat that could potentially challenge for consistent points in 2023 and with Gasly now the clubhouse leader to join the French team, Ricciardo may be forced to re-evaluate his stance or risk not racing at all next year.
Mercedes admit 11-year low is a reality
—Rebecca Clancy, The Times
After Lewis Hamilton came second in last month’s Hungarian Grand Prix – his second successive finish as runner-up and fifth podium place in a row – he looked within reach of achieving a victory for Mercedes before the end of the season, thereby maintaining his record of winning at least one race in each year of his Formula One career.
But after Sunday’s Belgian Grand Prix, when Hamilton retired on the first lap after a collision with Fernando Alonso’s Alpine, having been off the pace all weekend, Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, suggested that victory remains as elusive as ever.
“If I would have told you in Budapest that [Mercedes can win this season], you would have said that’s pretty possible,” he said. “Today, saying that I look like a fool.”
So where did it go wrong at Spa-Francorchamps and can Hamilton, or his teammate George Russell – who finished fourth on Sunday – claim victory before the season is out? Or are Mercedes destined for a first winless season since 2011?
Mercedes cannot match the pace of the Red Bulls and Ferraris in a straight line, which hurt them at Spa because of its long straights. The 1.8sec gap to Max Verstappen in qualifying at Spa was slightly exaggerated by the new engine in the Red Bull but, even so, Mercedes simply did not have the speed. They also appear to have got the set-up of their car all wrong.
They only have eight races now to achieve a victory this year but with F1 in the midst of a triple-header of races, there are only a few days for them to regroup before heading to the Netherlands this weekend, and then Italy a week later.
Hamilton had arrived in Belgium buoyed by Mercedes’s recent run of form and confident that he could win a race this year. By the end of the weekend, the seven-times world champion said he couldn’t wait to see the back of his W13 car – and he was not alone.
“That car [the W13], I don’t think it’s going to have the highest place in the Mercedes-Benz museum in Stuttgart,” Wolff said. “Maybe it will go in the caves. It’s not like we can experiment a lot this year and just dial stuff out and test. Whatever we decide for next year needs to be carefully evaluated.
“Our data doesn’t correlate with the reality. We have massive swings in performance that we can’t get on top of.”
The big problem for Mercedes is that this car forms the basis of next year’s car so it is essential that they understand where they are going wrong. The design – the slim frame and no sidepods route that they have chosen to go down, unlike the other nine teams – has been questioned throughout the year and it would appear that they are starting to question it themselves.
Hamilton spoke about the need to focus on next year’s car and Wolff reiterated that: “To take a decision for next year, changing the concept dramatically, how can you be sure that that’s the better direction to go down?”
Mercedes cannot understand why their race pace is so much better than their qualifying pace, something which has plagued them all season, as has their lack of ability to get the tyres to work in cooler temperatures – which was a factor in Spa.
Andrew Shovlin, the Mercedes trackside engineering director, said: “We struggled with the various compromises the car has [at Spa], much more so than in the races leading into the summer break. The car isn’t yet performing well enough over a range of tracks so it’s clear we need to widen the working window. We were also poor on the single lap, which is another area we have to focus on.”
Their problem for the Dutch Grand Prix this weekend is that the track at Zandvoort has similar characteristics to Spa, with fast corners, though the weather is forecast to be warmer.
This article originally appeared in The Times
Originally published as Formula One: History awaits Max Verstappen after leaving Lewis Hamilton, and the rest, in his wake
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