Max Verstappen believes that Charles Leclerc can bounce back from his poor run of results but admits he feels little sympathy for his championship rival.
The Red Bull driver claimed his fifth win of 2022 at Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix to extend his lead in the standings to 21 points, with teammate Sergio Perez in second, and Ferrari’s Leclerc a further 13 points adrift in third.
The Dutchman’s title defence didn’t get off to the best start however, after he failed to finish two of the opening three rounds of the season thanks to mechanical issues.
But while Ferrari still have the edge on Red Bull in terms of pure pace, Leclerc and teammate Carlos Sainz Jr. have been plagued with bad luck, reliability issues and bad strategy calls, which has cost the Scuderia valuable points.
Most recently in Azerbaijan, Leclerc and Sainz Jr. were running first and fourth when power unit and hydraulics failures forced both cars to retire, allowing Red Bull to finish 1-2 and extend their lead in the constructors’ table to a whopping 80 points after eight races.
‘I would always say s**t happens,’ Verstappen said of Ferrari’s bad luck in Baku after the race.
‘That’s racing. It happened to me, it happened to many people in the past. Unfortunately, it’s happening to Charles.
‘Of course, we had our misfortune at the beginning of the year, so we knew we had to play a bit of catch-up, but it seems like now it’s more or less evened out with the bad luck, and yes, you know you have to score points every single weekend if you want to really fight for the championship.
‘Everyone knows that everyone tries that, but it’s not always that easy.’
Leclerc emerged as the early favourite for the title after winning two of the opening three rounds but after missing out on victory in the last three races in Spain, Monaco and Azerbaijan, the Monegasque admitted he was very ‘hurt’.
‘If I would be in the same situation, I would also be disappointed, I think that’s very normal, but it’s about how you come out of it,’ Verstappen added.
‘You always look at how to improve things – that’s what we did at the beginning of the season. You learn from it, you don’t like it, you’re angry, but we turned it around.
‘You always have to stay on it because something else might happen and you always have to prevent these issues from happening.’
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