Max Verstappen is not thinking about F1 title just yet having not finished two out of three races, as he adds on fighting with Charles Leclerc.
It has been a disastrous start to the 2022 F1 campaign for Red Bull’s Verstappen, who has only finished one of the three races so far. While he won in Saudi Arabia, he faced two fuel related issues to retire from the races in Bahrain and also Australia.
In Bahrain, he did have a chance to win, while in Australia he was a good second as he has lost crucial points to leader Leclerc in his Ferrari. The Monegasque has finished all the three races and nothing below second to have an advantage of 46 points over Verstappen.
Even though they have 20 races to go along with the sprint events, Verstappen is not thinking about the championship but more about finishing the races. “We’re already miles behind, so I don’t even want to think about a championship fight at the moment,” he said.
“I think it’s more important to finish races I mean, of course Australia was in general just a bad day again, just not really having the pace. I was just managing my tyres to try and just bring it to the end because it looked like quite a easy P2 anyway and I knew I could not fight Charles and there was no point to try and put pressure on him.
“But we didn’t even finish the race, so it’s pretty frustrating and unacceptable,” summed up Verstappen, who has a new challenge of fighting against old rival Leclerc. Last year, he was up against the veteran Lewis Hamilton, but this year he is racing against a familiar opponent from their karting days.
“Every driver is of course different to fight against,” said Verstappen. “But also, I grew up with Charles, we are the same age. We already had our battles in go-karting. But yeah, so far. I mean, this year has been good. Last year has been good. You know, we had really a lot of, I think, enjoyable battles. So I just hope of course that it can continue like this.”
Here’s Christian Horner on shuffle
Here’s Sergio Perez on his fight with Lewis Hamilton
Here’s what Max Verstappen said regarding safety car
Here’s Christian Horner on fuel issue