How RB18 F1 car diet energised Verstappen’s title charge

Amid all the dominant form that means he could capture the crown at next weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix, it is easy to forget the dramas that overshadowed the start of the campaign.

In fact, early on in the year, it appeared that his championship challenge could be over before it started, as a spate of reliability dramas allowed main rival Charles Leclerc to open up a pretty hefty advantage in the drivers’ championship.

Then, once Red Bull had finally got its RB18’s reliability sorted, Verstappen found himself battling against some car characteristics that were not to his liking.

Instead, the weak front end of the car appeared to play perfectly to what team-mate Sergio Perez likes from the car, and there was a phase around the Monaco Grand Prix where it looked like the Mexican would even be the main title threat.

As the 2022 season wore on, it was very noticeable that both Red Bull and Verstappen managed to find another gear, especially on Sundays.

While the Ferrari F1-75 still appears to be a faster car over a single lap, the progress that the RB18 has managed to make with its tyre degradation has been impressive.

And it is that factor which has played perfectly into the team’s hands, in allowing Verstappen to not lose ground on those occasions when he started further down the order.

But more importantly, to help seal his championship advantage was the fact that he appeared to be more and more at ease with the way the RB18 was being developed, which was also taking the car away from what Perez liked.

This shift has prompted some suggestions that the team deliberately set about on an upgrade push that favoured Verstappen.

However, the reality is that the car came more to Verstappen simply through its natural evolution of being made better, and more especially the opening up of set-up windows that were not available in its infancy.

The real breakthrough for Verstappen was not some aero development or a bespoke set-up that was brought to help him make gains – it was simply that, as Red Bull got the weight off, that then delivered a double whammy of gains.

First, losing most of what was believed to be as much as 10kg of excess weight at the start of the season, delivered an automatic speed advantage.

In F1, it is said that every 10kg of weight is worth 0.3 seconds per lap, so a rough estimate means there were a couple of…