This Formula 1 season has turned into a ‘Challenge Max Verstappen’ kind of show – pick a grid position for the Red Bull driver and see if he can win. The answer has been, always, yes. In Hungary in early August, Verstappen started 10th and won. In Belgium, after the summer break, he was 15th on the grid and won. At the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on Sunday, he started seventh. It’s a measure of Verstappen and Red Bull’s superiority that pretty much everyone thought he would win from there, even with Charles Leclerc on pole for Ferrari in their home race. Mercedes driver George Russell, who started second behind Leclerc, said: “You’d have to be stupid enough to bet against him.” Verstappen was third a few meters after crossing the line to start the third lap and second two laps later. As he sat there over the next few laps, getting closer and closer to Leclerc, it was only a matter of time before the Dutchman was in front. Ferrari played on the strategy, but the reality was that it made no difference. “I don’t think strategically they made a bad call,” Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said. “We just had a faster package and would have won the race regardless.” Ferrari team principal Mattia Binotto agreed. “It’s not hard to beat a faster car,” Binotto said. “It’s impossible. He was faster. Whatever the strategy was, he would have won.”

From a grate to a chasm

It wasn’t always like that. The season turned around quickly. There was a period when Red Bull was involved in a very tough battle with Ferrari. Ferrari’s mistakes and misfortunes have smoothed Verstappen’s path for some time now, but by the end of July, there wasn’t much to choose between the two teams in terms of performance. Not anymore – and the Italian Grand Prix was a perfect demonstration of how the margin between the teams has grown in just a month or two from a leg to a gap. Red Bull, Horner said, degraded their performance in qualifying by running more downforce, knowing they would receive a five-place penalty for using too many engine components. This meant that their usual speed advantage on the straight was reduced – at the track where it is most important on the calendar in determining lap time. However, Verstappen missed out on pole to Leclerc by just 0.145s after one of the Monegasque’s trademark on-the-limit, last-minute specials. Ferrari, as Red Bull believed from looking at the GPS data, were also running their engines at a higher than usual rate. they assumed to look better in their home game. But within a few laps of the start, it became clear that not only was Verstappen faster than Leclerc, but his car was wearing less on its tyres. If Leclerc had stayed out under the first dummy safety car, Verstappen would have pitted. Ferrari went for it. They surrendered track position, committed to a slower two-stop strategy, hoping to at least try to get back at Verstappen on firmer tires at the end of the race. But when Leclerc made his second stop, he was no faster than Verstappen when he appeared. And his resigned demeanor after the match told its own story. Verstappen now leads Leclerc by 116 points. If he leaves the next race in Singapore 138 ahead, the title is his. That might be overkill – it would require Verstappen to win and Leclerc not to score. But it will come soon enough, no matter what. Leclerc finished second after qualifying on pole position

How is Red Bull so far ahead?

Monza was Verstappen’s fifth win in a row and 11th in 16 races. He is on course to break the record for most wins in a season – held, at 13, by Michael Schumacher and Sebastian Vettel – and the achievement of the last nine in a row set in 2013. On average, Red Bull is still not the fastest car this season per lap. But it has long seemed to be the better racing car, even if Ferrari had moments of dominance and many missed opportunities. Now, though, Red Bull isn’t just the best, it’s on another planet. “We’ve perfected the car,” Horner said. “We’ve managed to figure it out pretty well.” According to Verstappen, the key change was weight reduction. The car started the year overweight and Verstappen found it lazy and lacked traction at the front. He hates subversion. Losing weight has brought him to life, allowed him to express all his talent. “It’s amazing what we’re experiencing within the team,” Verstappen said. “We’ve had an amazing year. And it’s important to enjoy it as well. I think we’ve had a lot of different challenges on different kinds of tracks and now the car really seems to work on every track. And yes, we’re extremely happy.” It has left Ferrari scrambling for answers. Earlier this year, Leclerc and Binotto expressed their confidence that Ferrari could continue in the development race. After all, they said, it would be the same people developing the car as those who built Ferrari’s first competitive machine from 2018. But they were wrong. “In the last few races, Red Bull’s performance has been better than ours,” said Binotto. “Not in qualifying. We still have good pace in qualifying so the pure performance is still there. But in race pace we suffer from tire degradation and in that respect Red Bull is a better car. “They were able to develop the car for better balance and better tire degradation that we didn’t. We’re looking at the reasons why we need to address it – if not for this season, then for next.” The race ended under a safety car after Daniel Ricciardo retired

Review of the FIA ​​safety car finish

The race ended in controversial fashion as one of the recurring themes of the season resurfaced – FIA jurisdiction. Monza was not a good weekend for F1’s governing body. There was confusion after qualifying when it took nearly four hours for officials to release the provisional grid order. Normally, this doesn’t matter, but this weekend it had too much. Verstappen was one of nine drivers with grid penalties, including Lewis Hamilton and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, and not unreasonably people wanted to know where they would start. Even the teams disagreed – some thought Verstappen would be fourth (wrong). others seventh (right). “The regulations need to clarify how we measure in that regard,” Binotto said. “The reason it took so long is that there are certainly different interpretations and the regulations are not clear enough. That’s something we have to deal with going forward.” The FIA’s argument was that publication of the grid should wait until technical control. However, on Sundays the provisional match result is published immediately. Then on Sunday, there was a controversy over the race ending under a safety car. This was not a drama on the scale of the one that decided the title in Verstappen’s favor last year, but still, mistakes had clearly been made. And the crowd made their feelings known, booing below the podium, even if some of it was almost certainly for Verstappen, who won a Ferrari. “That’s it,” he said. “It’s not going to ruin my day. I’m just enjoying the moment.” The safety car took the wrong car – Russell, not Verstappen – and this delayed the proceedings. Even as Russell passed, taking most of the field with him, they were showing the wrong lights on the car. And although it had only been deployed to recover Daniel Ricciardo’s damaged McLaren, not for a crash, and with six laps still to go, officials had no time to restart the race. An FIA spokesman said Ricciardo’s car was stuck in gear, delaying his removal. “As the safety of the recovery operation is our only priority,” a statement said, “and the incident was not significant enough to warrant a red flag, the race ended under the safety car following the procedures agreed between the FIA ​​and all of the contestants. “ Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was upbeat about that, pointing out that the problem in Abu Dhabi was that the rules were not followed, which was not the case on Sunday. “Whether I’m injured from Abu Dhabi or not, the rules have been followed so far today,” Wolff said. “There were marshals on the track, a crane out there, so they didn’t let anyone pass and then there wasn’t enough time to let everyone pass. “If somebody’s not happy with the regulations and you want to do a big show and two rounds of fights after chaos, I’m all for it. But then you have to change the regulations. So I don’t think they should complain about anything that happened because those are the rules.” Horner and Binotto, however, disagreed. Horner said he was “disappointed”. It was a “relatively minor incident,” he said. “The principles of what we’ve always talked about is that nobody wants to see a race finish under a safety car like that,” Horner said, “and he felt there was plenty of time to start the race. “Even though there was a risk of it all being bunched up, we would have preferred to win the race under racing conditions. And you could hear the crowd’s displeasure because it just felt like everyone had stolen that finish.” Binotto was even more frank. “We don’t understand why it took them so long to decide,” he said. “They didn’t do a good job today and they just have to do a better job in the future because it’s not good for F1.” FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem has made his presence felt this year – on issues such as the row over drivers’ jewelery and underwear earlier in the season, the delay in publishing engine regulations and his handling of the car controversy. Frustration with the way the FIA ​​runs F1 has been brewing among teams for much of the season and is growing. Ben Sulayem called a meeting on Monday to discuss “a number of sporting issues” with the team’s sporting directors. “Following”, a statement…