“I get it”, said Max Verstappen, the championship leader, when asked about this weekend’s event, the F1 Las Vegas GP.
The event has been deemed by many as a track that is for business, glitz and glamour, and entertainment.
It wasn’t really considered a sporting spectacle for quite a few last year. F1 World Champion Max Verstappen stated that the Las Vegas GP was more of a show than actual racing to a certain extent.
Nonetheless, the 27-year-old chose his words more carefully on Wednesday ahead of his second visit to Vegas.
This time last year, Verstappen won the F1 Las Vegas GP and was truly jubilant about it, even singing ‘Viva Las Vegas’ on the radio.
“Don’t want to be negative or whatever but I get it. I mean, I understand why we’re here, business-wise, racing-related wise.
“I just enjoy more high speed corners. But that’s my personal preference. It’s not that this Grand Prix is bad.
“You deal with all different kinds of tracks. You need to try and win on all of them.“
Worries about the pace of the RB20 in the dry
Verstappen took his eighth victory of the season in Brazil following a stunning drive from P17 on the grid, giving him a 62-point buffer in the Drivers’ Championship over Lando Norris.
However, he has not won a Grand Prix in the dry since Barcelona in June.
Despite flashes of improvement since that horrible weekend in Monza — including a Sprint win in Austin — the RB20 still has its deficiencies.
The three-time defending World Champion is expecting another tricky weekend.
“If you look at the last few races, in the dry of course, we didn’t have the pace.
“It’s not because we won in the rain in Brazil that suddenly everything is fixed and everything is looking great.
“Of course it gave me a good position in the championship,” said Verstappen as he responded to whether or not he could win the championship here.
“I mean we did make some improvements of course with the car since Austin but in Austin and in the main races we are still lacking pace.
“Mexico was quite a poor race.
“Now, some things of course since then hopefully have been changed, not necessarily from our side.
“And I hope that now in the last two races we can see the full race performance of every car.
“We just keep trying to improve the balance of the car. I think in the sprint in Brazil on the dry we were quite competitive.
“Of course I am very happy that I won on Sunday. It would have also been very nice to see the pace in the dry on a full race distance.
“I also have to be realistic that we’re still not the quickest. But I hope we can be competitive here, It’s still very unknown with the track temperatures here.
“Of course, like last year, very cold [and] what that will do with the behaviour of the tyres.
“So that’s all that we need to again figure out in practice.”
Brazil one of his best races?
Over the past 8 years, Verstappen has put in some remarkable performances to cement himself as a legend of the sport.
But was Brazil one of his best races?
“It’s always tough to judge which one actually is your best. Because sometimes your best race doesn’t even need to be a win. It depends on a lot of factors and that is why I find it always difficult to rank them.”
However, he does consider it one of the most important races in his career, especially as the championship fight was getting tighter and tighter.
“The pressure is that I want to always do well every single weekend. It is not necessarily about the championship. I am just trying to enjoy the weekend as well. I will try to see how competitive we can be. The championship is not decided yet.”
Learning Every Year
Verstappen has had a pretty tough time with the RB20 since the mid-season. He has stated on many occasions that the pace just isn’t there to fight for victories.
However, he has worked to garner as many points as he can to fend off Norris and Leclerc.
The Red Bull driver says he’s happy with how he’s dealt with everything this year, in what has been a tricky campaign on and off track.
“Well a lot of things are learnt, you learn every year.
“You encounter a lot of different scenarios every single year that you don’t expect, but they happen in life. I am happy with how I’ve dealt with a lot of it.” stated the 62-time race winner.
“I hope that now in the last two races we can see the full race performance of every car. We just try to keep trying to improve the balance of the car. I think the sprint in Brazil on the dry we were quite competitive.”
Does Monza and Baku give a hint of pecking order this weekend?
Until Brazil, McLaren and Ferrari had dominated things after the summer break, with Norris, Leclerc and Sainz all winning races as their teams battle it out for the Constructors’ Championship.
While Verstappen expects Ferrari to be very strong, he did not want to make a cast iron prediction.
“The last few races, McLaren has been the quickest. But last year Ferrari was very fast here.
“But again, every year can be a bit different, how cars perform. Other teams also brought a lot of upgrades compared to how they ran the car last year.
“But normally on these kind of tracks Ferrari is always very fast, with the big stops and 90-degree braking.”
