With no fewer than 15 victories this season, Max Verstappen has set completely new standards in Formula 1 and secured his second driver’s world championship in a superior manner. Now the champion himself has looked back on his most successful F1 year to date.
After the start of the 2022 season was quite unsuccessful with two failures on the first three race weekends, Verstappen drove in his Red Bull in a league of his own in the months that followed. Only five times in the 19 Grands Prix since Imola was the race winner not Max Verstappen, who often had bad starting positions and did not prevent him from winning.
The 25-year-old sees the superior victory in his country of birth as an absolute personal highlight: “Belgium was unique. I’ve never had a better racing car and felt an incredible dominance,” said the two-time world champion in the “F1 Talks” format from the streaming service Offerer “Viaplay“.
“Everything worked from the first practice lap. We hardly touched the set-up. It was clear to us that the installation of a new engine would result in a penalty transfer. But even with 14th place on the grid, I stayed calm. I knew – if I get through the first lap unscathed, then I can win. Such self-confidence very rarely flows through you,” said Verstappen from the August weekend in the Belgian Ardennes.
Verstappen describes Singapore as the low point of the season
Within just a few laps, the F1 superstar had plowed through the entire field of drivers and taken the lead. In the end he celebrated a superior victory in Spa-Francorchamps in front of teammate Sergio Pérez and Carlos Sainz in the Ferrari.
Only a week later, Verstappen also raced to further triumphs at the home race in Zandvoort and in Monza, Italy, and was already established as the old and new world champion at an early stage.
From the Dutchman’s point of view, low points in the 2022 fable season were few and far between. One of the few of these happened in Singapore in October, when he only saw the checkered flag in seventh place: “Just as everything went right from the first lap in Belgium, everything went wrong from the first lap in Singapore. […] Every now and then there is just a weekend when nothing, absolutely nothing, wants to work out. I would like to forget Singapore 2022.”
Instead of in Singapore, Verstappen only made his successful title defense clear a week later on October 9 in Suzuka, Japan – in the fifth to last race of the season.