The epic championship battle Ferrari stumbles have robbed us of

Ferrari's biggest adversary in the 2022 Formula 1 title battle has largely been itself more than Max Verstappen, and team errors and mechanical issues have contrived to put Charles Leclerc a whopping 63 points behind his rival. Doing the maths, had Ferrari had not suffered those problems, Leclerc would actually be some way ahead of the order...

Charles Leclerc's emotions of disbelief and self-anger at the error that put him out of the French Grand Prix were evident from his body language as he climbed out of his stricken Ferrari.

As he smacked the top of his halo and looked to the skies seeking answers for why he had made yet another mistake, there was little doubt about the significance of the moment in the world championship battle. Just as his victory in the Austrian Grand Prix had opened a glimmer of hope that he could claw his way back against Max Verstappen after a troubled spell, the latest points swing to his Dutch rival was clearly a hammer blow to his 2022 ambitions.

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Author Jonathan Noble

Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.

Jonathan has won multiple awards for journalism - in 1991 he was the winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Sir William Lyons’ Award for young journalists, in 2010 he was awarded the Outstanding Individual accolade for consumer journalism in the Haymarket wards, in 2011 he won Haymarket’s Scoop of the Year, and in 2018 he was awarded a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for his contribution to F1 journalism.