How Ferrari's troubled 2022 handed Max Verstappen more F1 gold

• Charles Leclerc lost out on the 2022 Formula 1 Drivers' championship to Max Verstappen.
  
• An error by Leclerc on the final lap gifted Verstappen the title.
• Leclerc is looking forward to a renewed championship challenge in 2023.

Remember the start of the 2022 Formula 1 season? We bet you do because everyone had the wool pulled over their eyes that Ferrari would win this year's Drivers' and Constructors' championships.

Only they didn't.

What started out strongly quickly turned into a nightmare season as gremlins of all kinds reared their heads in Ferrari's championship bid. If it wasn't technical issues on the car, it was the team making strategic errors. And if it wasn't that, it's the drivers - Charles Leclerc and Carlos Sainz - tripping over themselves.

If anything, Ferrari should have won the gold this year, but by the time they regrouped and got their acts together (if they even did), Red Bull Racing and Max Verstappen were in such a commanding position that winning both championships became a question of 'when' and not 'if'.

And in Japan, the scene of Verstappen's second F1 triumph, Leclerc butchered it again at the final sequence of corners on the race's final lap. There's nothing new here as the fumble only sums up how tardy the Italian team's season had been.

The dreaded penalty

When the race resumed after a two-hour delay, Verstappen led from the front and there was a massive gap between him and Leclerc. But as he took the chequered flag, Leclerc was dealing with immense pressure from the Red Bull man's teammate, Sergio Perez.

Going into the chicane for the final time, before hitting the main straight, Leclerc got his braking wrong and steered straight. He rejoined the track, but then defended against Perez. Though it was okay to defend, Leclerc gained an unfair advantage when by going off track and was supposed to hand the position to Perez. He didn't which resulted in a five-second time penalty.

Leclerc was relegated to third and Perez promoted to second, leaving Verstappen on a 113-point advantage over his teammate with just 112 available in the season's remaining four races.

"A huge congratulations to Max for his second world championship," Leclerc said after the race.

"It's obviously frustrating today, the pace was not there after four laps, but it's like this. From Lap 5 onwards, it was all downhill. [I was] really struggling with tyres, a bit like the last race. We are very strong warming up the tyre, but then after three, four laps, we just destroy them, [so] we struggled this time.

"I think Max's title this year was just a matter of time, really - we expected him to win the title. Now we need to use those last races in order to become a better team and hopefully put in a bit more of a challenge next year."