After the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix, everyone talked about Max Verstappen and how the Red Bull Racing team dominated Ferrari and the rest of the grid. And it's kind of true because Verstappen started P14, and after half of the race, he was leading comfortably.
After the race, a crushed and disappointed Charles Leclerc called this progress of Red Bull strange, so let's see if it's something weird in this latest Max victory or is Ferrari at risk of being embarrassed a few more times until the end of the 2022 Formula One season.
Firstly, let's see what actually happened at the Spa-Francorchamps track. The defending world champion led a Red Bull one-two in Belgium, beating Perez by almost 20 seconds despite starting from 14th on the grid due to a penalty.
The Scuderia Ferrari was already concerned on Saturday, where Verstappen was so in control of everything that he only needed to do a single run in every qualifying session. In addition, the manner of the race only intensified Ferrari's unease. Sainz started from the pole and finished in P3, while Leclerc began only one place behind Verstappen but couldn't go higher than sixth.
"Other than all of this, there's obviously the pace also… The thing that is strange is that the feeling is quite okay in the car, then you look at the pace compared to the Red Bull and they are on another planet completely," declared Charles Leclerc after the race in Belgium. "We need to understand and hopefully by Zandvoort we understand and we come back to as close to Red Bull as we were in the first half of the season."
Usually, the Red Bull cars were slower on the straights throughout the season, while in corners, they are almost faster than anyone. However, at Spa (a track with long straights in sectors one and three and sector two full of corners), Max Verstappen was fastest through all the sectors in qualifying and in the race too. Besides, the Dutchman set the fastest lap on medium tires, and the time was so good that Leclerc couldn't beat it with fresh soft tires and an almost empty tank of fuel. So is something strange with the Austrian team's car?
Well, it's true that they comfortably are leading the drivers' championship as well as the constructors' championship; this was actually the first time this season the Red bull has emphatically dominated a whole Grand Prix weekend.
As Leclerc said, it is very strange that Red Bull was suddenly so much quicker than everybody, especially when the gaps between other teams have been more or less the same since the start of the season. I can say he is not wrong because Red Bull made a big step with their RB18 car, which is visible with even a simple look at the race weekend's result.
However, the RB18 has looked like a perfect match for the Spa-Francorchamps track, so there is a good chance this could be entirely circuit specific. "I think if you look at the whole weekend, yes, the car has been incredible from FP1," declared Verstappen after the race. "I don't think we expected it to be like this but sometimes it's nice when things positively surprise you, and it's been really enjoyable to drive the car around here this year."
Besides all this, the Belgian Grand Prix marked the debut of the new metric designed to restrict how much the cars are permitted to suffer from the porpoising effect. As a result, the FIA forced several teams to tweak their floor designs to avoid the excessive flexing of the plank. It is possible that Red Bull might have benefited if almost every other squad is now having to run their car at a higher ride height because the Austrian team reckons its car is built differently than everyone else's.
For now, we are not 100% sure that Red Bull benefited from the technical change, but if the upcoming race weekend results are the same as Spa, then Ferrari will be embarrassed almost every Sunday for the next three months.
Firstly, let's see what actually happened at the Spa-Francorchamps track. The defending world champion led a Red Bull one-two in Belgium, beating Perez by almost 20 seconds despite starting from 14th on the grid due to a penalty.
The Scuderia Ferrari was already concerned on Saturday, where Verstappen was so in control of everything that he only needed to do a single run in every qualifying session. In addition, the manner of the race only intensified Ferrari's unease. Sainz started from the pole and finished in P3, while Leclerc began only one place behind Verstappen but couldn't go higher than sixth.
"Other than all of this, there's obviously the pace also… The thing that is strange is that the feeling is quite okay in the car, then you look at the pace compared to the Red Bull and they are on another planet completely," declared Charles Leclerc after the race in Belgium. "We need to understand and hopefully by Zandvoort we understand and we come back to as close to Red Bull as we were in the first half of the season."
Well, it's true that they comfortably are leading the drivers' championship as well as the constructors' championship; this was actually the first time this season the Red bull has emphatically dominated a whole Grand Prix weekend.
As Leclerc said, it is very strange that Red Bull was suddenly so much quicker than everybody, especially when the gaps between other teams have been more or less the same since the start of the season. I can say he is not wrong because Red Bull made a big step with their RB18 car, which is visible with even a simple look at the race weekend's result.
However, the RB18 has looked like a perfect match for the Spa-Francorchamps track, so there is a good chance this could be entirely circuit specific. "I think if you look at the whole weekend, yes, the car has been incredible from FP1," declared Verstappen after the race. "I don't think we expected it to be like this but sometimes it's nice when things positively surprise you, and it's been really enjoyable to drive the car around here this year."
For now, we are not 100% sure that Red Bull benefited from the technical change, but if the upcoming race weekend results are the same as Spa, then Ferrari will be embarrassed almost every Sunday for the next three months.