Simply lonely: nobody like Verstappen at Interlagos!

(Cover picture: Max Verstappen)

The comeback of the year. There's no doubt about it, Max Verstappen's first-place finish represents his best race of the season, as well as one of the most important of his (albeit very victorious) career. At Interlagos there was simply no chance for his rivals: from start to finish it seemed as if he was the only one on the track, giving a driving lesson to the other 19 fastest drivers in the world...

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

With the huge amount of points gained over Norris, only sixth at the finish line, for Max this Brazilian race is likely to become key in conquering his fourth World Title; but let's go in order and, as always, analyze what happened in a race full of twists and turns, to say the least!

The rain disrupts the race, it's chaos from the start!

Right from the Saturday of the Brazilian race weekend it was clear that the rain, a classic at these latitudes at this time of year, was going to dictate the unfolding of the events on track. As spectacular as it is when it comes to lending itself to side-by-side duels, the Interlagos track - with its impressive elevation changes - has always created grip problems when it comes to running in the wet.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

With the new road surface laid out this year, however, the situation hasn't improved: this is why the qualifying session, cancelled on Saturday and then run extraordinarily on Sunday morning, had provided weird results with respect to the performance levels expressed by each team throughout the season: the VCARBs of Tsunoda and Lawson in P3 and P5, the Alpine of Ocon in P4, Albon in P7 but forced not to race after having destroyed his Williams in the final stages of Q3... In short, all the elements were in place for a chaotic race, and so it proved!

Andrew Ferraro / Motorsport Images

Formation lap: Lance Stroll, coming into Turn 4, loses control of his Aston Martin and damages the front wing. But, even more shockingly, he beaches his car in the gravel in an attempt to get back on track... What can we say, with the race not yet started, the Canadian has already thrown away any chance he might have had, in a confusing GP like the one he was about to begin. Such a shame for his team's mechanics, who had already spent a long time rebuilding the same car after Lance had destroyed it in morning qualifying...

Zak Mauger / Motorsport Images

Speaking of the start, here comes the second glaring mistake by most of the drivers on the grid: due to Stroll's Aston Martin to be recovered form the gravel trap, Race Director Niels Wittich had correctly decided to interrupt the start procedure, informing the drivers with an "Aborted Start" light signal. Lando Norris, totally ignoring the communication, decided to start for a second formation lap, followed by all the others (some of whom, however, remained correctly in their grid slots). Normally this kind of mistake would result in a penalty, but surprisingly - and, in this writer's opinion, quite unfairly - no penalty was imposed on either Norris or any of his colleagues who moved from their grid slot.

Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

When the race finally got underway for real, it was George Russell who took advantage of it. From P2 he burnt out his compatriot Norris and came into the lead of the Brazilian GP... Behind him, however, the situation proved favourable for him pulling away (together with Lando, behind him): with Tsunoda in third position keeping a pace that was inevitably slower than the first two, within a few laps a gap of about 10 seconds opened up between these two groups.

Among the members of the second one, led as mentioned by Tsunoda, was Verstappen, who, having started from P17, had performed a series of technically superb overtakes, result for the most part of quite some grip and confidence with his single-seater, that no one else had had over the course of the weekend. Watching the Dutchman braking extremely deep into Turn 1, delaying the braking point by as much as 30 metres in some cases, was a pleasure, and so it isn't that surprising - looking back on the race - to learn that on lap 11 of the scheduled 69 laps the World Champion was already in P6, alongside the aforementioned group with Tsunoda (P3), Ocon (P4) and Leclerc (P5).

Crashes, Safety Car, red flag and penalties: the two Alpine cars emerge

In hindsight we can say that - by Max's own admission before the podium celebration - Charles was the only one who gave him a bit of a hard time, which is why he managed to keep his rival behind him until lap 25, the lap on which the Monegasque pitted for a second set of Intermediate tyres. It was a wrong strategic choice but one that, luckily for the Maranello team (who's fighting for the Constructors' Championship) cost them little track position, thanks in part to a series of neutralizations that put Leclerc back in the positions he was in before his pitstop.

Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

Then, on laps 27 to 32, the increasing intensity of the rain caused many drivers to lose control of their cars. With Piastri hitting Lawson in Turn 1 and Hulkenberg spinning out on the same piece of tarmac, it soon became necessary to deploy first the Virtual Safety Car and then the actual Safety Car. But, as soon as Franco Colapinto went into the barrier under Safety Car conditions, it was clear that the race needed to be stopped: red flag, with everyone into the pits waiting for the barriers in the third sector to be repaired and for the rain to ease off.

Sam Bloxham / Motorsport Images

When the FIA decided to restart the race with a precautionary decision to opt for a rolling start, what was surprising was the position of the two Alpine cars, the team that had read the race unfolding with the greatest strategic clarity: P1 for Esteban Ocon and P3 for Pierre Gasly, lucky to benefit from an untimely pit stop for Russell and Norris, but very talented at not making mistakes and running at a quicker pace than the cars around them. For the Enstone team it must have been a frantic time, thinking that with such an amount of points (never collected in a single race weekend in recent years) they would have turned around a 2024 season that, let's remember, they had started with the slowest car on the grid.

Photo: Motorsport Images

But the quiet was short-lived for Ocon and Gasly, as Carlos Sainz's crash on lap 39 forced them to undergo another Safety Car neutralization, and then a new restart. This time, however, it was Max Verstappen who took the lead from second position with an attack (once again in Turn 1) on his historic rival Esteban. From that moment on, the Dutchman demolished any victory hopes for the French team with a string of fastest laps in which he opened up the gap disproportionately, not hinting at reducing his pace until the chequered flag: in the last 10 laps alone, Max bettered his own fastest lap eight times. Nobody like him in the rain at Interlagos.

In hindsight, therefore, the two drivers of the Enstone team had to "settle" for second and third position, ahead of a group of potentially better equipped drivers like Russell (P4), Leclerc (P5 in a Ferrari difficult to drive, as witnessed by Sainz's crash) and Norris, who with his final P6 - starting from pole position - is somewhat the disappointment of the day.

Much more disappointing were his words at the end of the race, when he attributed his positions loss (and, similarly, Verstappen's comeback) to the race circumstances rather than the talent expressed. In 2024, for the first time in his career, the driver from Bristol had a car with which to fight for the World Championship. Whether it was due to Verstappen's advantage at the start of the season, or to a series of mistakes by Norris himself and his team, with three races to go it seems that he won't be able to do so: I find that, instead of metaphorically putting his head in the sand, it would be very useful for him to recognise the greatness of his opponent and try to figure out how to beat him in 2025, when (starting from scratch) he might have a better chance. But at the moment there's still a lot to learn for Lando.

The Drivers' Championship is almost decided, but the Constructors' Championship is not over yet!

As mentioned in this analysis, Verstappen's victory in Brazil - in a way - puts a seal on the World Championship fight between him and Norris, with Leclerc who - at the end of 69 laps at Interlagos - is now mathematically out of contention. With only the Grands Prix of Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi still to be contested, the gap between Max and Lando is 62 points, when there are "only" 86 to be awarded: it's pretty clear that Max will only need to collect a haul of 24 points in the last three rounds to become World Champion for the fourth time.

In the Constructors' standings, on the other hand, the win is still open to three contenders: despite Red Bull's great recovery thanks to the points brought home on Sunday, however, the situation is still difficult for them to overturn. Even in Sao Paulo Perez finished outside the points paying positions, and his contribution to the English-Austrian team continues to be minimal... Between McLaren and Ferrari (with the latter 36 points behind the former), on the other hand, the last word has not been said: the Brazilian Grand Prix was for the Maranello team a half false step, but in three weeks' time in Las Vegas there will be the first favourable opportunity to regain points on the team from Woking.

In the meantime, see you for the Las Vegas Gran Prix (in the weekend from 22 to 24 November), always here on Race Analysis. Bye!

Categories

Reading time: minutes
Back to blog