Rewriting history - How Max Verstappen went about dominating the 2022 F1 season

Max Verstappen has had the best year yet in his Formula 1 career, winning a record 14 races in a single season - the most by any driver. He equalled Michael Schumacher (2004) and Sebastian Vettel (2013) with 13 wins at the 2022 United States Grand Prix, but he made the record his own at the Mexican GP.

But as has become common knowledge, the 2022 season did not start too kindly for Red Bull Racing, with both cars retiring from the opening race in Bahrain. They turned it around in Saudi Arabia, but the third race, Australia, saw Verstappen retire again.

From there on out, it seemed that Red Bull Racing turned its fortunes around, and they quickly grew into a near-unstoppable squad. No one had an answer for them, and how they approached the rest of 2022 was just mind-blowing.

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HISTORY MADE!Congratulations @Max33Verstappen, more wins in a season than any other driver in F1 history#2TheMax #MexicoGP pic.twitter.com/jeCixbkEa3

Blasting through the year

But it wasn't that Verstappen was just winning races, but how he did it. There was a calmness to his driving style. He became less erratic and more calculated. He picked his moments and bided his time when he was the one chasing. While the rest of the field played catchup to his standard, Verstappen cruised ahead.

Between the French and Italian GPs, Verstappen won five races on the trot, and it seemed that he could match Vettel for winning nine straight races during his Red Bull days in 2013. But the Singapore race prevented it, with the Dutchman settling for seventh after a challenging race. Then came Japan, which played out in his favour after he won it and secured the 2022 F1 Drivers'