No matter how you begin, make sure you finish strong like Max Verstappen! This saying is just as appropriate as the dutchman was during the championship title contention in 2022. Although Max Verstappen had a DNF to commence the year in Bahrain, he finished the year brilliantly by winning 15 of the 22 races. In an interview with Mototrsports.com, the Red Bull ace highlighted why he was so quick after the first few races and how the team dealt with the “overweight” concerns.

Red Bull’s star driver raced the team’s vehicle at such a high speed throughout the season that he made the other drivers look like grid fillers. Along with winning the driver’s championship, his courageous driving assisted the team in capturing the constructor’s title after a nine-year drought. But all of this appeared far away when the Milton Keynes team was forced to retire early in the season owing to problems with its fuel pump.

The RB18 initially didn’t want to make friends with the Dutch lion because the vehicle weighed more than the campaign’s minimum weight limit of 798 kg. It brought under-steer to a package where that was already being felt owing to the unanticipated handling concerns from Pirelli’s 2022 front tires. Verstappen revealed this in an exclusive interview with Motorsport.com. He said, “Well, now it was just related to the weight of the car. Being really overweight created an under-steering balance and once we started to get rid of that, it started to be more agile again.”

Adding further, he said, “Not just twitchy, but more agile. You could really use the front end. At the end of the day, that’s also how you really drive a fast car. A car cannot be fast with under-steer. It’s impossible. Especially with the tires we had this year, a bit more under-steer limited as well. You cannot have a car like that.”

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The races this season have demonstrated that the FIA’s decision to make adjustments to the technical regulations for 2022 has been successful in bringing the pack closer to one another. However, that hasn’t generally led to greater overtaking. Acknowledging that Max Verstappen went vocal on the DRS issue.

Max Verstappen expressed his thought on DRS

The FIA originally intended for cars to produce far more downforce and rely less on undisturbed air flowing over the wings. Although it is debatable if the drag reduction effect was overwhelming in the Spanish Grand Prix last year, the DRS system continued to provide the majority of the action. We may all be able to recall the qualifying incident for the Spanish Grand Prix, which compelled Red Bull to fix Verstappen’s RB-18 before the race.

Acknowledging all the DRS drama, Verstappen said, “Well, if it’s not [on the car] anymore then we are just driving in a train, I think I demonstrated that it’s really frustrating, so you need DRS at the moment with the cars. We can follow a little bit easier but once you’re behind, I do think the drag is a little bit less.”

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Max Verstappen and Red Bull had a wonderful finish. With the rules remaining unchanged for the foreseeable future, Verstappen anticipated starting his reign of domination. Nevertheless, two teams, Mercedes and Ferrari, have worked very hard to topple the Austrian squad. Considering all of that, do you think the Dutchman can win three titles in a row?