Max Verstappen admits it was surprising to end the 2022 FIA Formula 1 World Championship season with such a substantial gap at the top of the standings as he clinched his second world title.
The Oracle Red Bull Racing driver took a record breaking fifteen victories across the twenty-two races and clinched the championship with a win in the wet Japanese Grand Prix, five races before the end of the season.
Red Bull were helped by unreliability as well as some questionable strategy calls from Scuderia Ferrari that enabled Verstappen to come back from an early forty-six-point deficit to Charles Leclerc in the standings to come through and clinch his second championship.
Verstappen ended the year one hundred and forty-six points clear of Leclerc, and an additional three more clear of team-mate Sergio Pérez in third, but the Dutchman says the gap does not really reflect the reality of the season as there were not many times when Red Bull dominated a race weekend.
“On the one hand, yes,” Verstappen is quoted as saying by Motorsport.com when asked if he would have liked Ferrari to remain involved in the title battle for longer.
“But if you look at how close the cars were, it’s a bit surprising to have such a big gap anyway. There weren’t many weekends in which we were really dominant.
“But I mean, at the end, I’m pretty happy with how everything turned out, especially after the season I had last year [2021]. It’s not always good to have that kind of fight every single year.”
Verstappen believes the 2023 season will be a much closer affair, and he expects it to be a three-way fight at the front involving Red Bull, Ferrari and the Mercedes-AMG Petronas Formula One Team.
“I do think next year, everything will be closer anyway,” concluded the Dutchman.
