The 2021 season was a bumpy ride for Max Verstappen, who crashed multiple times with Lewis Hamilton, but he managed to claim his first world title.

The controversial circumstances around the win are well documented but Verstappen believes if luck had been with him earlier in the season the title race wouldn’t have come down to the last race.

“It’s always difficult to really use the right word for it but you need a bit of luck in your life, and I think up until that point I didn’t really have a lot of luck in the season – otherwise I think the championship would have been decided way earlier,” said Verstappen during an interview with Sky Sports.

“Luck came at the right time for me and then of course you still have to take the opportunity, which we did as a team.”

Verstappen won his first title in sensational circumstances at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.

“The way he [Verstappen] drives, the thing that I find most impressive…[if] there’s a gap, he goes for it, it’s not even a doubt,” he told Channel 4. “I used to weigh up ‘should I risk it now, should I not risk it’, he just goes ‘I can see the biscuit’ he risks it for the biscuit, he just goes, it really is quite special.

“And when you actually see how Lewis is defending against that, Lewis is an exceptional racing driver, but he’s had to open the door on more than one occasion because he’s come up against, if he’s fire, he’s come up against fire, and how do you fight fire?”

Red Bull team manager Graham Watson says he had to be blunt with Jos Verstappen, Max’s father, for trying to tell the team what to do.

Verstappen joined Red Bull in 2016 and had a successful rookie season but Watson has given an insight into how his father was around the team.

He told Motorsport.com: “Jos was of course also used to having full control over Max’s career from the karting days.

“When Max came to us, the team looked different than it does now, less professional. Jos perhaps doubted whether our team was of the level to help his son further in F1.

“I noticed this especially in the fact that Jos tapped my shoulder every day and asked: ‘Graham, what about this and what about that?’ At one point I had to be a bit blunt and say, ‘For f**k’s sake, just let the team members do their job.’”

George Russell is expecting the pace of life to be notched up a gear when he starts with Mercedes in the 2022 season.

Russell was previously with Williams for three years and says it’s a whole new ball game being at one of the top teams in the F1.

He told Motorsport.com: “Going from Williams, where I have been pretty fortunate in a way, not having to do so many marketing activities just because of the nature of the position we’ve been in, to Mercedes, where we’ve got tons of sponsors and lots of commitments that drivers need to tend to.

“This will be also off the back of COVID. With all the drivers and all the teams, it is all going to ramp up because the partners have missed out on 18 months’ worth of activation.

“From a racing side and off-track side, it is going to be incredibly intense.”

Esteban Ocon says he wants to be challenging for a world title and wants to get in on the battle between Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen.

Hamilton and Verstappen were title rivals throughout the 2021 season and exhibited one of the all-time great F1 battles.

“When you see those fights between Lewis and Max, you want to get involved. I’m not going to lie,” Ocon told Motorsport.com. “It would be fantastic to be able to fight for wins and podiums all the time. Hopefully, Formula 1 will go that way and with the new regulations, this seems like a dream. Hopefully it will become a reality.

“I work very hard. Fernando [Alonso] and I don’t take a lot of vacation. The goal is to spend as much time in the factory as possible.”

George Russell is looking to get more podium finishes in the 2022 season as he has joined Mercedes.

He has opened up about moments in his Formula 1 career where bad luck or performances have been “brutal emotionally” with his two losses in Bahrain among the experiences.

“These are the four moments in my three years that stick out to me that were pretty brutal emotionally,” Russell told Autosport. “It was just learning how to deal with that. You often feel like you’ve let the whole side down if you make a mistake, and letting that not drain you [is vital] because ultimately if you want to win a championship you need to perform over 23 races.

“You might have a bad race at race one, but you need to bounce back from that. Or you might have a bad race mid-season – you can’t let that affect the races following.

“So [you must] almost forget, move on and try to focus on the next race, because memories live short in Formula 1. I look back on Bahrain with no frustration or hard feelings. It’s something that I guess has moulded me into a stronger driver.”

F1 supporters are still discussing the end of the 2021 season after Max Verstappen controversially claimed the world title.

He and Lewis Hamilton headed into the final race on equal points with everything to play for. Hamilton led the majority of the race until Nicholas Latifi crashed and a safety car was deployed. Race director Michael Masi allowed the race to continue and allowed some cars to unlap themselves with a lap to go.

This allowed Verstappen to overtake Hamilton and claim the crown. Some fans were outraged with some even sending death threats to Latifi for crashing and the reaction has been labelled “scary” by former commentator Alexey Popov.

He told Championat.com: “I always thought Formula 1 was different from, say, football. I was very happy and proud that we have much more intelligent fans who respect each other.

“Respectful of the drivers they cheer for, but also of the other drivers and their teams. This year, sometimes it was just scary: I see people talking crap about each other. Honestly, this is not the Formula 1 I was proud of at one point.”

Daniel Ricciardo says he had mixed emotions around Lewis Hamilton’s fight with Max Verstappen for the world championship in 2021.

The pair were locked on equal points heading into the final race and Verstappen overtook Hamilton on the last lap to secure his first title. Ricciardo, who hasn’t won a championship, says he was jealous of the battle playing out before him.

“Of course, I’m envious,” he told an end-of-season press call, as quoted by GPFans. “But I’ve been envious for eight, nine years. It’s nothing new, but of course, it’s exciting the thought of it.

“For me like everyone, I’m a fan, I’m a driver, but I’m still a fan of the sport. It’s been great and take the envy aside, it’s awesome for F1 to have the battle. I can’t recall a year where two guys found themselves side by side on so many races. I feel like 75 per cent of races they’d gone wheel to wheel at some point, so it’s pretty awesome.”

Sergio Perez was brought into the Red Bull team for the 2021 season, replacing Alex Albon as a main driver, and he had a great campaign.

He was hailed in Abu Dhabi for delaying Lewis Hamilton while Max Verstappen pitted for new tyres. Perez also gained multiple podium finishes and has said the team have “brought him to a new level”.

He told GPFans: “Red Bull really pushes you to the maximum. Not just the drivers, [but] the engineers, the mechanics, the team bosses.

“Everyone is flat-out working to deliver the perfect result, the perfect moment for everyone. It’s been a tremendous experience and it has brought me to another level as a driver.”

If Lewis Hamilton is to step away from the sport his announcement is thought to come before the start of the 2022 season in March. The campaign will start in Bahrain with a lot of changes to teams.

Max Verstappen will look to defend the title he controversially won in Abu Dhabi and if Hamilton is out of the picture he could form a new rivalry with another driver.

But when does the new season start specifically and who are the drivers? Find out below: