"You always stay quite neutral in success and disappointments"- Max Verstappen on how he coped up after Bahrain and Australia failures

Max Verstappen talked about how he felt at the start of the season with two DNFs during the post-race press conference at the 2022 F1 Japanese Grand Prix. He revealed that even though it wasn't suitable, the team remained focused and no one was worried about the rest of the season.

According to him, finding out the reason for the errors and working on them is what matters the most, and he believes that is what kept the team high on morale. At the press conference where Sportskeeda was present, Max said:

"So that's the thing, the nice part of the team. You always stay quite neutral in success and disappointments. Because I think at the end of the day, that works best because, you have to just keep being focused."

Max Verstappen was crowned the World Champion after the Japanese Grand Prix as Charles Leclerc was given a 5-second penalty post the race. This dropped Leclerc from P2 to P3, giving Verstappen a lead of over 8 points and making him the champion.

Verstappen had a monstrous season, but it didn't start quite as well for him. During the very first race in Bahrain, he was battling Leclerc for the lead when he lost power and retired from the race. His teammate Sergio Perez went through the same, and because of that, Red Bull scored no points in Bahrain. The bad luck followed up in Australia, where Max had to retire again.

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Max Verstappen credits the team's mentality and support for winning

Verstappen stated that although the team got upset after the retirements in Bahrain and Australia, they were not demotivated for once. The entire crew helped in fixing the errors in the car and that is what he feels is good about the team. Max explained:

"But that's a good thing, I think, about the team: we don't act really disappointed. Everyone is of course upset, with what happened, but then we also tried to really quickly fix it and super motivated to try and turn it around."

After winning the championship in 2021, the start of the 2022 season didn't look any good for Max Verstappen or Red Bull. Ferrari were dominating at the beginning with greater cornering speeds and aerodynamics.

But with upgrades and groundbreaking strategies, Red Bull were able to catch up with the Maranello-based outfit to give them quite a challenge. Their straightline speed was hard to compete with, and with Checo's defense, they posed as a major barrier to all of the teams on the grid.

With Ferrari making strategic errors in almost every race, Max Verstappen was able to dominate the entire season. The two DNFs at the start of the season turned out to be nothing but small blots on his entire season as he won the World Drivers' Championship consecutively for the second time.