The importance for Max Verstappen of emerging triumphant from the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia was writ large in the Dutchman’s pleasure at finally being able to drive a competitive car. In a ride with which he was comfortable and able to take to a dominant victory for Red Bull, Verstappen was in his element. With it came a sense of what might have been had he not been long out of the championship fight, but also what might be to come next year.
The transformation was so marked because for so long this season the car has been a handful – the reason Verstappen’s title hopes faded long ago. That the team have come back to deliver a win in such emphatic fashion was no little achievement. In the opening period of the season, the RB22 was nowhere, deficient in almost every department.
It lacked pace, balance, even consistency, and for all his skill Verstappen seemed powerless. He described it as feeling like a passenger in the car at times. The four-time world champion wrestled it to a couple of podiums in the first half of the season but it was a sisyphean task.
Which, a rather understated critique, belies the fact that the last place a driver wants to be is in a car where he is unsure which way it is going to jump. Red Bull, under Laurent Mekies, stuck at it and brought major upgrades to Miami and Austria. Yet the scale of what needed doing across so many facets of the car remained difficult to overcome.
Only a month ago Verstappen could only qualify sixth at Monza, admittedly a power track where the relative paucity of their electrical energy deployment was a hindrance. It nonetheless suggested a win was as far away as ever. Yet there were indications that each incremental development was bringing a greater understanding of the car and how to coax the best out of it.
In Madrid, Verstappen qualified just over a tenth of a second off pole and had real pace in the race, which might have delivered more on a track where overtaking was possible. At the next round in Baku, Red Bull brought their final upgrade, including a development to the floor. In qualifying Verstappen was unlucky with yellow flags to start from eighth but in the race the car was rapid.
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