Max Verstappen won his tenth race of the 2022 Formula 1 season with a victory on home turf at Circuit Zandvoort. The Dutch Grand Prix victory was the Red Bull driver’s fourth in a row, taking his lead to 111 points over his teammate Sergio Perez and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, who are joint second in the championship.
The Dutch fans were out in their numbers, and the Red Bull strategists didn’t fail to help Verstappen pick up pole in qualifying and convert that advantage into a race win. Qualifying had a few ugly moments when some overzealous fans threw their flares onto the track, causing a red flag at the beginning of Q2. Lucky, the one that was thrown onto the track during Q3 rolled off and fizzled out without triggering more than a yellow flag for a few moments. The organisers had asked all fans to hand in their flares as they entered the circuit grounds, but some didn’t, and I guess every sport has a few bad apples to deal with.
The good thing is everyone behaved, well when I say everyone, I mean the fans. A lot more can be said about the AlphaTauri and the Ferrari teams with some of the calls they made during the race. The human errors in the sport always add to the drama, and for what was billed to be a difficult track to overtake on, we saw some risky and exceptional overtakes on the 4.7km racetrack. It was an exciting and eventful race with a virtual safety car (VSC) and another full safety car deployment that turned many race strategies upside down.
Can Anyone Stop Max?
I had to choose the title carefully because last week, I had said it would be up to Red Bull and Verstappen to lose both championships. Well, with Perez taking a step back in his performance this weekend, only the constructor’s championship might have a glimmer of hope for the chasing pack. As for Verstappen, circumstances keep playing in his favour, and this year, he has more composure to let his talent shine better. We can’t leave out the amazing Hannah Schmidt and the other Red Bull strategists helping bring home the silverware.
If you want to be bald and throw in some conspiracy theories, then you could say AlphaTauri are playing the perfect support role for the senior team. In Hungary, it made sense for Yuki Tsunoda to take on some extra power unit components and have work done to his car after qualifying so that he wouldn’t start in 13th but from the pitlane. This gave an extra spot on the podium and fewer cars to overtake. Again this weekend, there were dodgy calls by AlphaTauri after Tsunoda had reported a loose tyre and stopped on the track but was asked by the team to start again and come to the pits for a change of tyres. Four turns after returning to the track, Tsunoda stopped on the side of the road, triggering a virtual safety car.
Tsunoda’s two incidents caused yellow flags and a VSC, all in the space of two laps from lap 48. At this point in time, Sir Lewis Hamilton and George Russell were running in second and third because Leclerc had pitted at the end of lap 45 for hards. The two Mercedes had only had one stop and were on hards and had good pace because they made their first stop later than the other front runners who started on softs while the Mercedes pair started on mediums. The VSC allowed Verstappen to come in for a new set of softs to get him to the end of the race, but Mercedes reacted and double-stacked their cars for mediums. Both teams gained an advantage here, with the majority of the teams choosing to pit for faster tyres as well.
The major argument at this stage of the race is that the Mercedes had good pace on the hards, which were fresher than Verstappen and Leclerc’s mediums, and they were catching up to the two, hence why Leclerc pitted. Had there not been a VSC and technically a free pit stop for Verstappen, would Hamilton and maybe Russell not have gotten an overtake on the Red Bull? That’s the contentious view that has been floating since. It is mainly because AlphaTauri didn’t have to send Tsunoda back onto the track if they knew something was wrong with the car unless they did it to engineer a faster stop for Verstappen.
Softs For The Win
The advantage was with Verstappen after the VSC stops, but there was still a glimmer of hope for the Mercedes drivers because the softs on the Red Bull would wear out quicker than the mediums, and if the Mercedes kept close enough to Verstappen, they might have had a chance to overtake for the victory.
Alas, another Ferrari engine would fail, but this time in the form of Valterri Bottas’ Alfa Romeo. The Fin stopped on the main straight, a few hundred metres before Tarzan corner (first corner) and a safety car had to be deployed on the 56th lap. Verstappen took the opportunity to pit at the end of the lap for another pair of softs, but the Mercedes team decided to keep their drivers out, and with that, Hamilton inherited first, and Russell was promoted to second.
The stage had been set for a thrilling race to the end, with Russell offering some cover for Hamilton from the charging Verstappen and the pack behind him on softs. Verstappen would need to do a lot more work to get past both Mercedes, which might damage his tyres, giving the Brits an advantage. It wasn’t meant to be as Russell made a snap judgment call to pit for softs as the cars drove through the pitlane whilst they recovered Bottas’ car on the track. This left Hamilton vulnerable on the restart as Russell dropped to third during his pitstop. Verstappen made little work of passing Hamilton at the restart, and by turn one, he had regained pole, and that’s where he would finish.
We have seen how having a faster car doesn’t mean you will easily beat the rather quick Red Bull. You need a strategy that works, and we have seen Ferrari bottle it on many occasions, so this was Mercedes’ turn to prove to us that they know better. I guess they are still making the same mistakes as they did last year with the strategy.
The only downer on the weekend was Perez’s spin during the final run of Q3, though it helped ward off the challenge of those behind him as he ruined the rest of the field’s final run. He started in fifth, and that is where he finished while his teammate scoped all the weekend awards, including the fastest lap and driver of the day.
Not Enough Team Play At Mercedes
The rhetoric this weekend was, “if that had been Bottas who made that individual call, he would never have been allowed to pit.” I can’t argue with that much, and we saw Bottas play the ultimate wingman for the majority of last season and parts of the 2020 season as well.
On Sunday, Russell was meant to play that role, but he wanted more, and there is nothing wrong with that. It’s good to be ambitious and assertive, but his side of the garage sacrificed a double podium for an attempt at victory for him that was a huge stretch given the pace of the Mercs to the Red Bulls. Sure, his call was for protection from the rear, but the battle with Verstappen could have bought him some time, the same way it eventually did for Hamilton, who finished five seconds ahead of Sainz. It’s just like they say in football, get the ball into the box and create an opportunity for a mistake from your opponents.
Mercedes didn’t do that, and we can understand why Hamilton felt so hard done because he was left all alone in the end. He was vocal about it; anyone would be. Yes, he can get some slack for not having the best of restarts, but the team let him down. They should have pitted both cars or not pitted at all. They clearly had the skill to pull off a double stack on a cramped pitlane which even the commentators thought would be impossible earlier on in the race. Strength is in numbers, especially when you don’t have the fastest car, and this is the same thing Fernando Alonso did for Esteban Ocon last year when the Frenchman won his first race.
Ferrari Strategists Deserve All The Plaudits
If Ferrari were a football team, the strategists being the coaches, would have been fired a long time ago. I know I’m making a lot of references to football, but it is all with good cause. Too much has gone wrong in the hands of the strategists this season.
On Sunday, the two Ferraris were doing a good job in second and third place. There was a little scuffle between Hamilton and Carlos Sainz on the first lap, but luckily they avoided a collision that could have damaged the cars. Come the end of the 15th lap, Sainz was called into the pit to swap his softs for mediums. We all thought it would be a routine stop until we saw his car stationary and on the jacks for a whole 12.7 seconds. It turns out the pit crew was not ready for Sainz, and the strategists made a rash call to bring Sainz in. The result was that not all four tyres were ready to be put on and everyone waited for the rear left tyre to be retrieved and put on. The crew on the left rear also left their spare gun in Perez’s path, and he ran over it as he took off after his pitstop. A comedy of errors left 9th and behind Perez, who had been 18 seconds behind Sainz. Hamilton and Russell benefited from the Sainz mistake as they kept the position they gained from Sainz when they, too, pitted 15 laps later.
Sainz’s afternoon would go from bad to worse, though he drove well to rescue positions and points during the race. During the safety car laps, Sainz pitted for softs, but when he came out, he almost collided with Alonso’s Alpine. He received a five-second penalty for that, and although he finished fifth, he was demoted to eighth place. That is the second time in successive weekends that a Ferrari driver has gotten a pit-related penalty and lost places due to this. Hopefully, Ferrari will get it right on home turf at the Autodromo Nazionale Monza for their home race, but I won’t hold my breath if I were a Ferrari fan.
On the other hand, Leclerc benefited from Mercedes’ lack of coordination as he managed to get past Hamilton on faster soft tyres for third place, which is where he would finish. He was unlucky to have taken his second pitstop just before the Tsunoda incidents and lost places to the two Mercedes when he stopped for softs and then made up for it with another stop for softs during the safety car period. With his third-place finish, he is now level on points with Perez with 201 points.
The Rest Of The Field
Perez, Alonso, and McLaren’s Lando Norris all benefited from Sainz’s penalty and got the jump on the Ferrari driver by finishing within the five-second penalty period. Alonso would feel vindicated after being almost taken out by Sainz. Alpine was also thrilled with getting ahead of Sainz after he was allowed to keep the position he gained when overtaking Ocon just before the yellow flags that were being waved in front of both drivers. It was tricky, but I guess there was enough for him to keep the position.
Ocon and Aston Martin’s Lance Stroll rounded off the top ten. For Stroll, that’s another tenth-place finish this season. He hasn’t finished higher than tenth yet this season. Stroll was unfortunate not to participate in Q3 even though he made it into the final round, but his car had other plans for the afternoon. Technical issues meant he could not participate and finished where he started. He had a quieter race than his teammate Sebastian Vettel who had an interesting duel with mentee Mick Schumacher with the young German squeezing his way past his senior countryman. Vettel also caused some stress for Hamilton and Perez when he ignored blue flags and got into the way of the two who were jostling for third on lap 38. He received a five-second penalty for that.
The rest of the grid just tried to adapt to the change in strategy that was brought forth by the VSC and safety car. Unfortunately, it didn’t work out well for those who tried to run long on the hards and had to switch onto the softs so as not to lose any ground with the other cars. Daniel Ricciardo was one who pitted five times but to no avail. He couldn’t get past the 17th position he started at.
For all the talk and whining about gaining an advantage and pitting during the safety cars. We only want to complain when our favourite driver loses out. It is a chance for drivers and teams to adapt their strategies. You can not be static with your strategy. This is where you earn your badges as a good strategist.
On we go to the Italian GP and the final race of this post-summer triple header. Fingers and toes crossed for all Ferrari fans.
Blue Flag Racers 
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