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Max Verstappen secured his fifth race win of the 2022 F1 season after brilliantly fighting off Ferrari's Carlos Sainz in the final stages of the 2022 Canadian Grand Prix, making it his first win at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve.
In a post-race media interaction, the Dutchman, who started the race from pole position ahead of two-time world champion Fernando Alonso, said:
“The safety car didn’t help. Overall, they [Ferrari] were very quick in the race, so it would have been really tough for me to close that gap at the end even on fresher tyres. But it was really exciting at the end - I was giving it everything I had and, of course, Carlos [Sainz] was doing the same. I could see he was pushing and charging, but when you’re on the DRS it’s a lot easier to charge. The last few laps were a lot of fun. Luckily, this year, we seem really quick on the straights so that helps a lot.”
Max Verstappen has now extended his lead in the world championship by a whopping 25 points. Sergio Perez, who remains second in the standings, suffered a gearbox issue that forced him to retire from the race, while Charles Leclerc started from the back of the grid due to taking a new power unit. This allowed the reigning world champion to optimize his results this weekend.
"We are willing to take risks" - Max Verstappen on the safety concerns regarding porpoising.
In a pre-race press conference ahead of the Canadian Grand Prix, after the FIA passed a technical directive stating that the governing body will be intervening to tackle the porpoising issues faced by the 2022 F1 cars, Max Verstappen claimed that these are the risks he is willing to take.
He said:
“Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of sports out there where I think you damage your body in general. I mean, once you retire from your career, you won’t be like you were when you were 20. That is simply how it is. I mean, football players have problems with their knees, all sorts of injuries, or when you’re a motocross rider or a Moto GP rider, the amount of bones they have broken in their body. You can always judge, ‘yeah, is that safest thing to do? No, but we are willing to take risks.’ That’s our sport. That’s what I love to do. For sure.”
He continued:
“The porpoising we have at the moment is not nice and I don’t think it’s correct, but some teams are able to handle these things a lot better than others. So it is possible to get rid of it. So, I don’t think we have to overdramatize what is happening at the moment.”
Mercedes has been impacted the most by these problems, with Lewis Hamilton, in particular, taking the brunt of the porpoising in the form of severe back pain, as was seen in Baku last weekend.
Catch F1 next in Silverstone on July 3, 2022.
