It’s awards season! The time of year when we at GrandPrix247 look back on the 2022 Formula 1 season and choose who gets one of our awards. Our car of the year? The Red Bull RB18.
The RB18 was fast from the start and shared that honour with Ferrari’s F1-75, but it didn’t start its life as a “Car of the Year” candidate.
However Red Bull kept on developing the latest Adrian Newey brainchild, putting it on a diet while fine-tuning it on the way until it became worthy of this award.
Perhaps the best race that exemplifies how dominant the RB18 was, at least in the hands of Max Verstappen, was the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix at Spa, where Verstappen set the fastest qualifying time but had to start 14th on the grid after power unit penalties, and went on to win the race in total dominance.
It was also the weekend when the FIA had their TD039 in effect, which Mercedes hoped would slow the RB18 down, but it didn’t; Verstappen drive circles around everyone that weekend.
RB18 left the F1-75 in its wake
As the season advanced, the RB18’s advantage on the F1-75 grew, and while the Red Car remained as the faster qualifying machine, the Blue one was so dominant in races that it made up the difference while the Ferrari was busy chewing up its tyres.
On the reliability front, the RB18 was bulletproof and while it broke down in Bahrain and Melbourne, Red Bull sorted it out fairly quickly and Verstappen’s Title defense campaign was back on track by Imola.
Everyone remembers how dominant Red Bull were between 2010 and 2013 when they made a clean sweep, but the RB18 reminded us of those achievements and propelled Verstappen to achieve his 15 wins-per-season records in 2022, and what makes matters worse for the competition is that it is such a good car that its successor, the RB19 presumably, will pick up from where it left.
Red Bull might be dealing with less wind tunnel time after their cost cap breach, but the dominance of the RB18 may mean that, despite this handicap, they will not suffer much.
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