After securing his first pole position since June, Max Verstappen’s pole-to-victory conversion was crucial in his bid to gain maximum points as his championship battle with Lando Norris reaches its final stages.
From the outset, Verstappen appeared to be in full control of the race, despite the intense competition for second place happening behind him. Lando Norris, starting from fourth, quickly moved up to second within the first few corners, and he managed to close the gap on the long back straight, staying within DRS range of Verstappen for the initial laps.
However, Norris didn’t have the pace to seriously challenge Verstappen, who extended his lead by one second and beyond, denying Norris the chance to use DRS and closing off any immediate threat.
Meanwhile, the battle for positions behind them remained fierce. In a dramatic last-lap twist, Norris lost second place to Carlos Sainz, who drove an impressive race in his Ferrari. This ensured Verstappen’s victory by a margin of over 3.9 seconds, extending his championship lead to 54 points.
Speaking after the sprint, Verstappen expressed his delight with Red Bull getting back to their winning streak for the first time since Barcelona.
“It was not too bad. Yeah, it feels a bit like old times. I’m very happy with today.
“If you look at the whole race Ferrari was also very quick.
“But I think for us, finally, we were racing again. Normally in the race, we’re always looking back behind us But now we could just do our own race and yeah, we had good pace.”
Having now won 11 out of the 16 sprint races since their introduction to the F1 calendar, Verstappen proved himself as the expert of the format, commenting on his impressive result and explaining how they get up to speed quickly.
“It’s of course always a very hectic weekend like this, to get the car in the right window, but luckily the last few times that we had a sprint I think the car was in a good window.
“So yeah, there’s a bit more pressure on delivering but luckily it’s working out for us.”
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Christian Horner admitted Verstappen had a solid amount of performance left in his tyre at the end. The Dutchman set the fastest lap on the final tour.
He also expects Ferrari to be very strong tomorrow as Carlos Sainz and Charles Leclerc both showed strong pace over the 19-lap Sprint.
“They looked very competitive. They were pushing each other hard. And that usually takes quite a lot out of the tyre, particularly in the first sector.
“They will be very strong in the race tomorrow, for sure.
“I think what was encouraging for us, if you look at Max’s last lap, he managed those tyres well, he still had quite a bit of performance left in them.
“It was pretty quiet, it was Max mainly doing his thing, he wanted a bit of information of ‘where’s Lando pushing harder than me’ just for a management point of view.
“But his capacity to take all of that in and monitor his slip and how much he’s sliding on the rear tyres and so on. It’s classic Max, he’s so strong in that area.”
