Here's How Verstappen Can Win The 2022 F1 World Championship At Suzuka

Without a doubt, the star performer of this season has been Max Verstappen. Driven by the consistency of the Red Bull team, the Dutchman has already racked up 11 wins with 5 races still to go, and leads the the 2022 Formula 1 World Driver's Championship by a whopping 104 points. This means that Max Verstappen can very well win his second title at the Japanese GP, so long as his lead over the rest of the field is over 112 points. If he manages to do that, he will be only the fourth driver in the entire history of Formula 1 to have secured the title with 4 or more races to go. Only Michael Schumacher and Nigel Mansell have bested this number by winning the 2002 and 1992 championships with 6 and 5 races to go respectively, and Sebastian Vettel having equalled this number by winning the 2011 title with 4 races to go.

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Verstappen has already racked up 11 wins this season in 17 races.

With 4 races to go after Japan, the maximum number of points any single driver can score is 112 (25 points per race + 4 points for 4 fastest laps for every race + 8 points for sprint race win at Brazil). Which is why, Max Verstappen needs to have a 112-point lead in the driver's championship to secure his second title at Japan. This means that he will need to outscore Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc by 8 points, and Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez by 6 points, with every other driver already out of the running for the 2022 Driver's Championship. To do so, there is a whole list of different positions Verstappen can finish in, which we will list down below.

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Verstappen needs to finish 8 points ahead of Leclerc, & 6 points ahead of Perez to win the title at Suzuka.

The most straightforward of these is winning the Japanese GP and also scoring the fastest lap. Doing so will mean that Verstappen will score 26 points this weekend, and even if Leclerc finishes P2, he will only score 18 points - 8 fewer than Verstappen. Should Verstappen win the race and not score the fastest lap point, he will require Leclerc to finish P3 or lower, in order to secure his crown. On the other end of the spectrum, Verstappen will have to finish in P6 at the very least to secure the championship, as falling lower than 6th will mean that he scores fewer than 8 points, meaning that Leclerc will still be in the championship mathematically, regardless of where he finishes.

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Here's how Verstappen can win the championship in Japan:

FL: Fastest Lap (1 point)
Points for Positions in Race: 1st = 25, 2nd = 18, 3rd = 15, 4th = 12, 5th = 10, 6th = 8, 7th = 6, 8th = 4, 9th = 2, 10th = 1