When Max Verstappen crossed the line midway through the second practice session late on Friday afternoon, his lap time made for grim reading for Ferrari
“So at the moment you are P2,” Charles Leclerc’s race engineer Xavier Marcos Padros relayed to his driver. “P1 is Verstappen – ‘45.5.”
Leclerc could not hide his shock. “Wow… okay,” he replied. “A ‘45.5 is quick.”
Verstappen has built up an 80-point advantage in the drivers’ championship in part through his relentlessly consistent speed, week in, week out. On paper, Verstappen and Red Bull would both be heading into qualifying day perhaps as confident as they may have been all season, given how Ferrari have tended to have the advantage on Saturdays in 2022.
However, this weekend is different. Because no matter how fast Verstappen is on Friday or tomorrow, he will not start from the front of the grid. Instead, he and Leclerc will find themselves staring at a sea of rear wings in front of them when the lights go out on the grid on Sunday due to both being among six drivers set to start from the back of field following a raft of power unit and gearbox penalties.
Starting further down the field didn’t prevent Verstappen from taking victory in Hungary before the summer break, but that was achieved from 10th on the grid. Verstappen will start on the penultimate row at best on Sunday as things stand.
But Spa-Francorchamps could hardly be more different from the Hungaroring. Red Bull team principal Christian Horner says his team took that into account when making the decision to break his power unit limit this weekend.
“You look strategically at the calendar,” Horner explained. “We felt it was particularly tight to get to the end of the year with the engine allocation that we have, so you then look at the circuits coming up: Zandvoort – you don’t want to take it there – Monza’s actually harder to overtake than you think, Singapore – you don’t want to take you there – Japan’s tricky to overtake…
“You start running out of options. This is a good track to overtake at and we feel we should be quick here, hence we’ve decided to take the opportunity.”
But Ferrari are not panicking just yet over their apparent deficit to Red Bull. Especially not Carlos Sainz Jnr who, with no power unit penalties to his name so far this weekend, becomes one of the early weekend favourites for the win.
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