"Is that fair racing?" - Max Verstappen on Red Bull call to back up Charles Leclerc and help Sergio Perez at 2022 F1 Abu Dhabi GP

Max Verstappen revealed that blocking Charles Leclerc to aid Sergio Perez in clinching P2 in the championship was never considered by Red Bull. The Dutchman felt it would have been unfair to back the Ferrari driver and instead believes that Perez’s tire strategy cost him second place.

Asked if there was ever a Red Bull call for him to back Leclerc into the pack during the Abu Dhabi race, Max Verstappen said:

“No, there was not, but also that is quite a tricky call to make. You also don't want to end up… of course, you can possibly block but is that fair racing? I think not the nicest way going out of the season, like that. And it looked like Checo was catching him enough to try and actually get a move but then he lost quite a bit of time with that bit of a fuss between… was it Pierre and Alex probably? You lost quite a bit of time with that, because I was watching the screen.”

“But yeah, unfortunate. I think, like Checo said, that second stint, because the deg was quite high on the Medium, in hindsight, probably, as a team, we could have pushed a bit more on that on that middle stint for Checo, but that's always easy to say afterwards. At the time, we thought that we had to be a little bit careful on the tyres. Again, we've had a lot of great weekends, but even in great weekends, there are always things that you can learn.”

The double world champion believes it would have been unfair to back Charles Leclerc into the pack during the race. He felt that even if the team had considered the possibility, it would have been a tricky call to make.

Max Verstappen felt Sergio Perez lost time stuck behind Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon on his final stint on the medium tires. The Dutchman pointed out that the high degradation levels made the race tricky for his teammate and Red Bull could have perhaps strategized the Mexican’s race differently. The 25-year-old, however, was clear that blocking Leclerc or backing him into the pack was not fair play on the track and wasn’t the best way to end the season.

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Max Verstappen expects a closer pecking order in the 2023 grid

The Dutchman believes the grid will bunch up more in 2023 as teams have started to understand their cars better. Previewing the season ahead, Max Verstappen believes 2022 was a learning curve for many, whereas 2023 will see closer battles between teams.

Expressing his views on the pecking order for the 2023 season, Max Verstappen said:

“I do think it will be closer. People are understanding the cars a lot more. And, yeah, over time all the teams will just edge closer. But from our side, yeah, it's been a really positive weekend. So that's, of course, really encouraging also for next year. But we also know now, over the winter, we really have to keep pushing and keep trying to find performance and not only performance, understanding, possibly the tyres even more, because the tyres will change a bit for next year. So yeah, let's see how we are going to manage all of that.”

Max Verstappen had a dominant run of 15 victories, the highest clinched by any driver in a single season. He rounded off the championship with 454 points, the maximum number of points scored by any driver in a single season.

The Dutchman’s dominant run of 2022 is unlikely to be replicated with the new regulations shaping up well. From here on, however, it will only be about toppling records and racking up statistics for the double world champion. His season started with him chasing a 46-point deficit against Charles Leclerc and it ended with him leading the Monegasque by 146 points, a new record of its own.