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Delighted with his “incredible” result, it could have been even better for Max Verstappen had it not been for an early puncture.
Having failed to make it out of Q1 for the first time since Sochi 2021, the odds were very much stacked against the Dutchman who had been unhappy with his car since Friday morning.
With the Weather Gods looking unlikely to help, the Dutchman’s chances suffered a further blow when a complete new engine meant he had to start from the pitlane.
But then again this is Max Verstappen we’re talking about, and though his battle through the field to finish third was pretty amazing, it could have been even better.
Having picked off Franco Colapinto for 13th, on Lap 7 the Dutchman was advised that he had a slow puncture, no doubt due to debris from the earlier clashes, and had to make an unscheduled stop, thus dropping him back to 17th (of 18).
Clearly fired up, the Dutchman got to work again and began slicing his way through the field. By Lap 31 he was third but subsequently pitted and dropped back to thirteenth. By Lap 51 he was leading but just a few laps later Red Bull opted to pit him yet again, putting him on the softs he’d had trouble with throughout the weekend.
The rest is history.
“Miles better than our qualifying, that’s for sure,” he told reporters at race end. “Just a very strong race,” he added. “I think we just had a much better pace.
“Today also I think it was a bit colder, which maybe helped us,” he admitted. “The car just felt a bit more responsive. I think, even with that puncture that I picked up on the hard to then drop back to last and then come through the field again on the mediums, I think we did the right strategy.
“Even on the Soft, it seemed like it was OK,” he said, despite constant warnings from Gianpiero Lambiase not to push them too hard. “Just when you start getting close, and I had passed George, you already wear your tyres a bit. And then when I was getting close to Kimi, the tyres just start to overheat and you lose a lot of grip. And then, of course, the soft is a bit more difficult than a medium for that.
“But overall, it’s a super strong race,” he grinned, in a masterpiece of understatement. “I mean, coming from the pit lane to the podium, 10… 11 seconds off the lead, I think for us is a very, very strong result. And, definitely I didn’t expect that, of course, waking up this morning.”
Asked about the difference in the car to just 24-hours earlier, he admitted: “Impossible to know. I mean, the hard tyre, I don’t know if it was going to be a really good tyre.
“But I felt fine on the medium. I felt fine on the soft. When I was on the hard tyre, yeah, initially, maybe the medium had a bit more grip from what I could see around me. But at the same time, I mean, you’re all in dirty air. You’re just sliding around. So it’s impossible to know.
“But for sure, it’s not ideal. I mean, to pit again, be in the medium back in the pack fully, and then have to go all the way through the field. I think that compromised a bit that first stint on the medium, because I mean, I had to pass quite a few cars. You’re overheating tyres constantly.
“So that was a bit more of a difficult stint towards the end, I would say, the last eight laps, ten laps. But still, yeah, a very strong race for us.
“To be on the podium, I did not expect that at all,” he insisted, “even with the puncture at the beginning. But we never give up. We always try to improve and find more lap time and luckily we found that again today.”
Check out our Sunday gallery from Interlagos here.
