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Max Verstappen claims that given a McLaren he would have disappeared into the distance on Sunday.
While McLaren, journalists, fans, and – of course, Kenji – continue to debate the rights and wrongs of the Woking team’s strategy on Sunday, four-time world champion Verstappen contributed to the debate.
Reflecting on his performance, he told ViaPlay: “I’m very happy with what I’m doing right now… but I could think what would happen when I would be in that other car.”
Asked if he was referring to the McLaren, he replied: “Yes, you wouldn’t see me anymore!
“The whole race I saw two orange cars in my mirror, and yeah, especially those last 20 laps, we were pushing quite hard out there,” the Dutchman explained at race end. “You could just feel the tyres were degrading more and more. But you had to keep on fighting it, basically being on the limit.
“I’m very proud with this result,” he admitted. “Most of it, of course, was done yesterday, being able to start from pole, because around here I think it’s just very hard to follow. You only have one DRS zone as well here, so it’s very tough. Plus the degradation seemed quite low, so you do a one-stop.
“Still, we take it, we really maximised the weekend, and I’m very proud of everyone.”
He had every right to be proud of himself, for while he all but wrapped things up on Saturday with that mega lap, there was still the little matter of holding off the Papaya cars come Sunday.
Meanwhile, McLaren has defended its strategy and the decision not to swap its drivers around, insisting that, despite appearances, Piastri was not quicker than his teammate.
“Lando was trying to get in Max’s slipstream, but any time you went below one second there was a significant loss of grip,” said the Italian. “So then Lando was doing a little bit of an elastic, trying to cool down a bit his tyres, then going again. So I don’t think it is a situation that we should judge at face value in terms of what the pace of the car was. Lando was trying to get close to Verstappen with maximum momentum, but it was difficult.”
Believing also that the race was all but lost on Saturday, he said: “We knew right from the start that on this track you need seven, eight tenths of performance advantage in order to be able to overtake. This sort of lap time difference may be generated because there is degradation in the tyres, but with the new tarmac, Suzuka has changed the feature of being a high degradation circuit. It is now a very low degradation circuit. It was a very easy one-stop and there are not many strategic options.”
Meanwhile, asked by ESPN if he feels his performance of late feels as special to him as many believe it to be, he said: “Yeah, it does. It also means that I really care, even though, of course, it’s not been the easiest start to the year for us.
“You know, we are not where we want to be in terms of performance,” he added. “I think that’s no secret. But, yeah, this weekend, yeah, it’s been really, just really, really nice.
“I don’t listen to the positives and the negatives. I’m just in the middle, you know, so I just focus on my own performances. Just keep working, keep grinding.”
