With an 80-point lead before Sunday’s race in Belgium and nine Grands Prix remaining this season, Max Verstappen has a firm grip on a second successive Formula 1 drivers’ title.
Verstappen of Red Bull has won seven of the last 10 races since two retirements in the first three put him 46 points behind his closest challenger, Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.
At the most recent race in Hungary, before a summer break, Verstappen won after qualifying for the 10th starting position. It was the first time he had won starting below fourth and only the second time in Red Bull’s 338-race history it had won from below the top six.
“Of course, it’s a great lead,” Verstappen said. “But we cannot have too many days as we had in qualifying,” when his car had a problem with the power unit.
“Even in the race, we had a few little issues with the clutch and the upshifts, which was not great to drive. Overall, it’s good, but we just have to keep on working, keep on trying to improve things.”
With nine races remaining, Verstappen could challenge the record for most wins in a season. Michael Schumacher won 13 in 2004, as did Sebastian Vettel in 2013.
“We’ll try to win as many as we can in the remaining races we have,” Verstappen said.
“More importantly, we have to keep the lead in the championship. That’s what we have to try and secure.”
Christian Horner, the Red Bull team principal, is also cautious. His team holds a 97-point lead in the constructors’ championship, which it has not won since 2013.
“A phenomenal first half of the year,” he said in an interview. “It’s more than our wildest dreams could have been coming into the season, especially with a very competitive and rejuvenated Ferrari.
“Obviously, sitting on top of the constructors’ and the drivers’ championships at this point of the year is very healthy, but there’s still a long way to go. There’s no complacency. We’re looking to build on that momentum from the first half of the year.”
Although Verstappen was the drivers’ champion last season following a battle with Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes and a controversial ending in the final race, Red Bull missed out on the constructors’ trophy by 28 points to Mercedes.
Its record-breaking run of eight consecutive constructors’ titles will likely end this year. It is 127 points behind Red Bull.
“Obviously, having the No. 1 on the car [as winner of the 2021 drivers’ championship] this year with Max was a very proud moment for the whole team,” Horner said. “We’re determined to defend that as well as we can, and he is driving better than ever.
“The team’s also performing at a very high level, and we’re grabbing the opportunities. It would be phenomenal if we could manage to win back that constructors’ trophy. It’s such a big thing.”
Red Bull and Verstappen have been aided by strategic failings and unreliability from Ferrari and driver errors from Leclerc.
Tactically, Ferrari has made mistakes in the Monaco, British and Hungarian Grands Prix. From winning positions, Leclerc finished fourth, fourth and sixth, respectively. In Spain and Azerbaijan, he retired from the lead of both races with power-unit failures.
In the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix, Leclerc was pushing Sergio Perez of Red Bull for second when he spun into a barrier. After returning to the pits for repairs, he finished sixth. In France, he crashed out of the lead while under no pressure.
“We need to get better than a whole,” Leclerc said. “It feels like there is always something going on — reliability, mistakes, whatever. We need to be better at putting a weekend together.”
Assessing his title chances, he said: “Before thinking about the championship, I just want to understand, and as a team we need to understand, what we need to do to get better. Otherwise, it is going to be very difficult.”
Despite the issues that have affected Ferrari this season, Mattia Binotto, team principal, is refusing to panic or apportion blame.
“If I look at the balance of the first half of the season, there is no reason why we should change,” Binotto said. “It is always a matter of continuous learning and building — building experience, building skills.
“There is no reason why we cannot be competitive in the next races.”
After winning two of the first three races and finishing second in the other, Leclerc has managed to finish on the podium in only two of the following 10 races despite his car being faster than Red Bull’s. He was second in Miami and won in Austria.
“Charles needs to look at every single race now as an opportunity to win,” Binotto said. “The last races have not been great, but there is still a lot of potential.”
Ferrari’s fall has allowed previously uncompetitive Mercedes to close to within 30 points. Its drivers, George Russell and Hamilton, are 20 and 32 points behind Leclerc.
Hamilton, the seven-time champion, has finished on the podium in the last five races. He was second in France and Hungary, but has not won this year. He has never gone 13 races into a season without a victory.
Hamilton is also the only driver in Formula 1 history to have won a race in each year he has competed. He has nine races left to continue his streak.
“That’s what we’re working towards,” Hamilton said. “If we are able to take the pace we have had into the second half of the season, we can start to fight with Red Bull and Ferrari.
“We have still made huge progress and taken huge steps. To have consistency, with two double podiums in the last two races, gives us great hope and a huge push for the second half.”
Since Hamilton had to be helped from his Mercedes at the end of the Azerbaijan Grand Prix because of back pain, the complaints over this year’s cars have subsided.
Changes to the aerodynamic regulations for this season were introduced to allow the cars to follow more closely and aid overtaking, making the races more exciting.
A side effect is porpoising, a violent up-and-down movement caused by the stalling of airflow beneath the cars, which can also be affected by bouncing when they strike the ground repeatedly. Mercedes suffered the worst.
Minor changes are being made to the cars for this weekend’s Belgian Grand Prix. The FIA, the sport’s governing body, recently confirmed further major alterations for next season. This had been resisted by some teams, including Red Bull and Ferrari.
“It’s a tricky one because that regulation change is massive,” Horner said. “It changes the whole concept of the aerodynamics.
“I’m certain if you left the regulations alone, the engineering capability in this pit lane is such that it wouldn’t really be an issue next year.”
In opposition, Toto Wolff, the Mercedes team principal, noted that an FIA medical study showed that brain damage was possible from continued bouncing.
“The argument we haven’t had any porpoising or bouncing in the last few races doesn’t count because Austria, Silverstone, Paul Ricard, aren’t tracks where you bounce anyway,” Wolff said.
“I still fundamentally believe there is no choice for the FIA and for us to do something, because I don’t want to have the bouncing back in Spa [in Belgium]or some of the later races where the track is not as smooth, and then we haven’t done anything, and people say ‘Well, it’s too late’.”
