Starting seventh at the Italian Grand Prix, Red Bull driver Max Verstappen comfortably finished first at Ferrari’s Monza stadium on September 11.
This was Verstappen’s 11th victory of the 2022 F1 season. He now has 116 points more than his number one rival – Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc, with 6 races left in the season. This gap means Verstappen can win the championship as early as the next race in Singapore.
The advantage of starting first and the enthusiastic crowd at the Monza speed hall did not help Leclerc much. The RB18’s excellent speed helped Verstappen overcome all obstacles and forced Leclerc to pursue a risky 2-pit strategy, but still could not beat his opponent.
Despite only starting second in qualifying and being demoted 5 places to seventh for using an engine over the limit, Verstappen had a perfect race. The Dutchman quickly moved up to fifth after the start and then overtook Pierre Gasly (AlphaTauri) to take fourth by the end of the first lap.
On the next lap, it was Daniel Ricciardo (McLaren) who became the RB18’s loser. Now, after two laps, Verstappen was left with only George Russell (Mercedes) and Leclerc. After setting consecutive fastest-laps, by lap 5, Verstappen had overtaken Russell’s W13 to move up to second. The gap between the RB18 and the F1-75 had been reduced to less than two seconds.
Verstappen moved even closer to Leclerc when the virtual safety car was announced on lap 12 when Sebastian Vettel’s AMR22 (Aston Martin) suffered a problem and was left on the track. Seeing Red Bull’s superior pace, Ferrari decided to gamble by calling Leclerc back for a tyre change during the virtual safety car period and switching to a two-pit strategy.
However, Ferrari’s decision did not really work. When the Italian team was changing tyres for Leclerc, the safety car status was lifted. Red Bull did not pit with their rival but actively did the opposite of their strategy by continuing to keep Verstappen on the track. It was not until lap 25 that the Dutch driver returned to the technical area for his first tyre change.
When Verstappen returned to the track, the RB18 was 10 seconds slower than Leclerc. However, the advantage of the new tyres and good speed helped the Dutch driver continuously shorten the gap to the leader. Within seven laps, Verstappen had reduced the gap to just over five seconds and seemed certain to soon catch up and overtake Leclerc.
But Ferrari recalled Leclerc for a second pit stop on lap 33, switching to softs in the hope of catching Verstappen with 18 laps to go. When he returned, the Monaco driver was more than 20 seconds behind and had made little progress before a safety car was deployed on lap 47, with just over five laps remaining, when Daniel Ricciardo’s McLaren suffered an engine failure and stalled at Lesmo corner. The safety car was deployed too long, meaning the race had to end behind a safety car.
Ferrari’s strategy was questioned again after the race. But Ferrari CEO Mattia Binotto said there had been no mistake, as Verstappen was so fast that a one- or two-stop strategy would have seen the Dutchman win. His Red Bull counterpart Christian Horner insisted the Austrian team would have pitted on lap 12 if Leclerc had not pitted then.