Red Bull’s recent run of domination began in the 2022 campaign when they won the Constructors’ Championship at the United States GP with three races to spare. Max Verstappen‘s win in Texas guaranteed the Milton Keynes-based outfit their first Constructors’ title since 2013. Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has now reflected on the 2022 campaign and explained how it was Charles Leclerc’s errors that gifted his side the trophy.
Marko, in his exclusive column with SpeedWeek, wrote, “Ferrari was actually faster in the first half of the season. It was only through strategy and driving errors from Leclerc that things tipped in our favor.”
Ferrari indeed did begin the 2022 season in a better fashion than Red Bull as they had an outstanding 1-2 at the opening race of the campaign in Bahrain. What made the start of their season even better was that both Red Bull drivers suffered from reliability issues during that race.
Leclerc started the 2022 season as one of the championship contenders as he won two of the first three races. However, as a result of his errors, he jeopardized his opportunity to pose Verstappen a strong enough challenge for the title.
Leclerc made his first huge mistake at the race in Imola when he lost control of the car while chasing Sergio Perez and ended up in the barriers. Besides Leclerc’s mistakes, Ferrari also let the Monegasque down with poor race strategies.
As a result of mistakes from both the driver and the team, the Italian outfit finished a whopping 205 points behind 2022 champions Red Bull. While Ferrari are still struggling to match Red Bull, they seem to have more serious issues now than just poor strategic calls. The pace of the SF-24 just doesn’t seem as good as that of the RB-20.
How is Ferrari still struggling?
After comfortably finishing P2 in the standings in 2022, Ferrari seemed to suffer a massive downfall in performance last year. As a result, they also ended up losing P2 to Mercedes last season.
On the other hand, Red Bull established unprecedented dominance. After winning 17 races in 2022, they won a whopping 21 out of the 22 races last year. The only race that they failed to win was the Singapore GP, one that was won by Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz.
Although Ferrari are yet to reach Red Bull’s level even in 2024, they seem to have established themselves as the second-fastest team again. The Prancing Horse managed to register the final podium in both the Bahrain and the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix so far. Sainz finished third in Bahrain, while Leclerc got the final podium position in Jeddah.
