Villeneuve: 'Perfect ending for Red Bull in the land of Honda'

Jacques Villeneuve disagrees with critics who speak of a "boring and dominant season" by Max Verstappen and Red Bull Racing. He highlights the team's difficult start to the season, which recovered superbly after the first few races to then gain the upper hand in the championship.

Villeneuve saw, apart from the first three races of 2022, an "almost perfect" Red Bull. He, therefore, thinks the championship for Verstappen is well deserved. After the poor start to the season, the Austrian racing stable recovered strongly and slowly but surely gained the upper hand in the title battle with Ferrari, where the exact opposite occurred.

The Italian racetrack went wrong too often, which saw Villeneuve increase the pressure on Charles Leclerc. The Monegasque started making mistakes himself, and did so again in the final corner of the Japanese Grand Prix. "Of course, Verstappen would have won it anyway but Red Bull did get the perfect ending this way. Winning in the land of Honda, as the ties are tightened again," Villeneuve wrote in his column for Formule1.nl.

The 1997 world champion stresses that Red Bull has been super strong and made great strides, but that it looked easier than it was. He also points out a crucial point in which Red Bull won out over Ferrari: tyres. The RB18 mostly won over the F1-75 in terms of tyre degradation, a factor that proved crucial throughout the season.

While some people speak of a dull season in which they saw Verstappen dominate, Villeneuve instead speaks of a "good season with good racing". Sure, a blistering title fight between Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton played out in 2021, but this year there is a lot of action on the track and tracking and overtaking actually appears to have become easier. Villeneuve is therefore not surprised that F1's popularity has "exploded".