Max Verstappen never imagined the wins he attained in F1 2022 after the start they had as he credits Imola weekend that changed it.
At one point, it just looked like the fight against Mercedes in 2021 just slowed Red Bull’s development work of 2022 and that Ferrari managed to take control of it. But it was short-lived as once in the driving seat, they never looked back.
As per Verstappen, it was the weekend in Imola where they attained a 1-2 which brought them firmly in championship mode. Coupled with issues at Ferrari only helped Red Bull to build on its advantage by mid-season where it would be hard to defeat them.
As Verstappen has previously noted as well, he was certainly surprised how they managed to fight back and eventually create history with record number of wins with 15 against his name in a year surpassing a joint record of 13 of Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel.
“We had a pretty terrible start to the year, so at the time, I thought we would not be able to really fight for the championship, but then things really turn very quickly and also from outside the car became even more competitive,” said Verstappen. “And, yeah, it’s been a crazy year for us in terms of wins.
“It’s been really, really enjoyable and something of course, I would have never imagined at the start of the year. What point the championship was back on? I don’t really know, don’t remember. Soon as we just started to… I mean, the Imola weekend was very good, like we had a really strong weekend. And then, of course, the gap was slowly reducing.
“That’s normally always a good sign, but you can’t afford… at the time we couldn’t afford any more retirements. Of course, the gap now is very big so we could have had retirements but at the time, after already two DNFs so early on in the year we turned it around very quickly. But honestly, I don’t really remember what race I thought that it was back on but I think for us, as a team, Imola was a very important weekend, to have that kind of result,” summed up Verstappen.
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