After a blockbuster 2021 season, the start of the 2022 F1 season was something that a fan could only dream of. A thrilling battle between Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc was sprouting at the start of the season as the duo went neck to neck over several weekends. However, things deteriorated rapidly for Leclerc and Ferrari, and they seem to have given up the championship halfway to Max Verstappen and Red Bull. And Norbert Haug, the ex-Mercedes chief, believes it was Ferrari’s “gifts” to Red Bull that gave it away.

Commenting and evaluating the prancing horse’s last season, Norbert Haug, in an interview with RND and quoted by the GP Fans, said, “Ferrari did not have a catastrophic year. Ferrari became vice world champions, both for the drivers, with Charles Leclerc, and for the teams.”

“Even in the best of cases, Red Bull would have been unbeatable by Ferrari. And the fact that Ferrari made some – to put it mildly – strange strategic decisions over the course of the year and garnished them with various slapstick inserts during the pit stops – a gift,” Haug said referencing the infamous Ferrari blunders and giveaways.

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Haug expects Red Bull to be as dominant in 2023 as it was in 2022, when he said, “In 2023, Ferrari has to be better than second, which I dare not predict.” And while Red Bull might already be a few steps ahead of the rest of the grid, the advantage can always be washed away, as happened with Ferrari in 2022.

What went wrong at Ferrari in 2022?

In 2022, one could only imagine had Ferrari not thrown away the wins, due to its strategic blunders, how better the season could’ve been. But things weren’t all that bad for them. From what it appears, it was Red Bull who got the newly introduced regulations right to the point.

Haug also believed that “even without making mistakes, Ferrari could not have finished better in both standings than it did in the past season.“

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Neck and neck until Monaco, Charles Leclerc was nowhere to be seen around Verstappen’s on the points table. And while Carlos Sainz and he toyed hard, pit wall calls forced the drivers to make errors, and reliability issues rendered them helpless and eventually forfeited.

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Going into next season, Ferrari surely has a great car to build upon. In the end, one could only say that Ferrari started off great and the new team principal needs to ensure that it learned from its mistakes.