At Red Bull, they believe they would have won the French Grand Prix even without Charles Leclerc’s crash – amazement at Ferrari pace
With his seventh win of the season at the French Grand Prix, Max Verstappen takes a big step towards defending the title after his biggest rival Charles Leclerc retired with a driving error and failed to score points for the third time in 2022. Verstappen’s lead in the drivers’ standings is now already 63 points.
The Dutchman was clearly the faster driver at the start of the race, but couldn’t find a way past the Ferrari driver, so he ruined his tyres. As a result, Red Bull tried an undercut, but Leclerc flew off at turn eleven one lap later, which meant the victory was in the bag.
However, Red Bull motorsport consultant Helmut Marko is certain that Verstappen would have won the Grand Prix even without Leclerc’s retirement: “We were about to do an undercut that would have worked and after that it would have been just managing. “
Verstappen: Leclerc only drove away because my tyres were too hot
Verstappen even says he was surprised at how slow the Ferrari driver was in the early stages of the race and that he only fell behind as the race progressed because he wrecked his tyres when he was running tight.
“I would have thought he would have been quicker and I would have guessed that chasing would be difficult. But it looked like we were pretty competitive,” the world champion analysed the early stages of the race.
“It looked good for us and compared to Austria we were much better,” he adds. “I was driving in his DRS for a very long time, which heated up the tyres quite a bit. That’s why I think he was able to pull away, simply because the tyres were too hot. In addition, he didn’t drive away madly. So I think we would have had a good fight even on the hard tyres.”
“You could see that I was clearly faster, but as soon as I was on, the tyre temperatures went through the roof. With the heat, the rough tarmac and all the fast corners it was quite difficult. “
After Leclerc’s accident, it then looked like a coffee run for the WRC leader as no one could threaten him anymore: “After Charles retired, I knew it would be all about tyre management as two stops would not have been an option with the length of the pit lane. I was able to gradually increase the gap because the car was good today,” Verstappen explained.
The fact that the Red Bull driver was unable to overtake Leclerc at the start with a top speed advantage of around seven km/h over Ferrari and a slight headwind on the long Mistral straight, which helps the slipstream and DRS effect, came as a surprise to motorsport consultant Marko.
“What was surprising was that the tyres held up better than we thought and that overtaking has been much, much more difficult than we assumed,” Marko said. “You saw that with Mercedes, then with us and also with Ferrari. “
Red Bull seems to have solved problems from Austria
In the end, Red Bull could care less as Verstappen went on to win the race. “It’s a shame, of course, when there’s always either technology, strategy or driving errors in such a great duel. It distorts the picture. But of course we are happy about the 25 points,” said Marko.
What is pleasing for Red Bull is that they seem to have fixed the race pace problems from Austria. “We learned a lot from this weekend and I think today we were much more competitive in the race. But we still have some room to go with the car,” Verstappen said.
“They [Ferrari] were still pretty quick even though they were sliding around a lot. That shows they have a good car. So we still need to find performance especially on a fast lap,” said the world champion.
