The statistical reason that makes Leclerc and Ferrari champions in 2022

The Ferrari team has started the 2022 Formula 1 season very well, with Charles Leclerc at the top of the drivers’ standings and with a large gap ahead of the second in the constructors’ standings.

This Monegasque start is the second best in history with the current scoring system (excluding the extra point for the fastest lap introduced in 2019), only behind what Nico Rosberg did in 2016 , when he added a total of 75 points in just three races.

The German took the victories in Australia, Bahrain and China, and also climbed to the top of the podium in the following event, in Russia, thus achieving a perfect mark of a hundred points.

This will be impossible for Charles Leclerc to match in Imola, but the Ferrari man, following the statistics, would have many options to win the title at the end of this season.

The distance with respect to the second in the world, George Russell, is 34 points, the largest since the same 2016 in which Rosberg was proclaimed champion, but the 38 units that he leads over Carlos Sainz and the 46 over Max Verstappen are more representative , as they seem to be the main rivals for the award.

No one since the time of Michael Schumacher had signed a better start in a Formula 1 season, and it is that the seven-time champion won the first three tests in the years 2000 and 2004 , when he also won the title.

The data is encouraging, although in five of the twelve times that a driver started as the leader of the third race he lost at the end of the season, even more so when on the last two occasions it happened to Sebastian Vettel in 2017 and 2018 when he was a team driver of Maranello.

As for the constructors, it seems impossible for them to escape, and that only three appointments have been held, but the 49 points compared to Mercedes, the second force in 2022 due to their perseverance, make it seem very difficult to snatch the 17th championship from those in red

The last time Ferrari won the team classification at the Grand Circus was in 2008, with Felipe Massa and Kimi Raikkonen as drivers, when they scored a total of 172 points, 21 more than McLaren.

Since the 2018 British Grand Prix , the Maranello team had not been leading the constructors’ table, and only twice have they led the world championship with three races under this points system, in 2010 , with 76 points, and in 2017 with 102.

In both campaigns they succumbed, against Red Bull and Mercedes respectively, so they want to learn from their mistakes and turn the situation around. The statistics play in their favor here, because in nine of the twelve times that a team reached the fourth round of the calendar as leader, they won recognition at the end of the year, and they only failed in 2010 and 2017 with the Italians, and in 2012 with McLaren.

Other great beginnings for Ferrari, curiously, were in 2000 and 2004, when they took 29 units out of McLaren and Renault respectively, although at that time they added fewer points due to the system used.

Thus, if the case of Nico Rosberg in 2016 is taken as a precedent, Charles Leclerc has many chances to win the world title having added 71 of the 78 possible points , and only 7 units have escaped after Max Verstappen snatched him victory in Saudi Arabia.

The statistics accompany the Monegasque, but he will have to continue setting the pace if he does not want to get a scare from a rival or from his own teammate, Sainz, with whom Ferrari wants to savor the constructors’ championship again 14 years later.

Who were the leaders after three races and who won the title at the end of the season?