Verstappen’s ‘positive pressure’ as he goes ‘flat out’ for fifth title

After the US Grand Prix, Max Verstappen declared for the first time in his entire career that a world championship victory was a real possibility.

Because Verstappen has been refuting the concept for a while, it seemed like a significant moment.

That made sense during McLaren’s imperious form from the beginning of the year to the end of the summer.

Verstappen’s points gap to the McLaren drivers was so great even when the four-time champion didn’t want to discuss it in public even though he might have been considering it in private when he first started winning races in September. He claimed that he was just going with it and not thinking about the championship.

Verstappen said the same thing at the start of the weekend in Austin, even though he had won two of the past three grands prix and finished second in the other. Since the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, A McLaren had not finished ahead of him.

Verstappen could have said it again after a weekend of racing where he won the sprint and the grand prix on the same day. He might even have been expected to. But by this point, he almost had faith in him.

Verstappen remarked, “There is a chance,” adding that. “We just need to try and deliver these kind of weekends to the end. We’ll try. It is fascinating.

” Of course we know we need to be perfect to the end of the season to have a chance, but we will try, and if we succeed, of course amazing.

The last four races have had quite impressive statistics over the past month and a half.

After the Dutch Grand Prix, Verstappen was 104 points behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in the championship, and 70 adrift of Lando Norris. He is now 40 points behind Australian, who has lost just 14 points over his team-mate.

Verstappen’s own doubts about what he had accomplished were expressed by him. If someone had told him after Zandvoort this would happen, he said, “I would have told him he was an idiot.

However, the car was in a good location. It’s really that easy. Of course, we put some upgrades on the car, but we just understood our car a bit better, where we wanted it to perform better. “

Its own story is told in a 64-point victory in four races, but how it came about is just as remarkable.

Red Bull won the summer races in Europe before McLaren’s victory at the Italian Grand Prix in early September when Verstappen finally erred over the improvements to the floor and front wing.

Since then, the Red Bull has been the fastest car. That could have been disproven until this weekend in Austin because Monza, Baku, and Singapore are all short, slow corners that call for good braking and traction.

The McLaren’s strengths lie elsewhere: they are in long-duration, medium-speed corners where they outsmart everyone else.

But Austin is a” normal “circuit, a road course not a street circuit, not a high-speed outlier like Monza, with a good range of corners. Verstappen also triumphed once more.

The team has selected Brazil, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi as the potential venues for McLaren’s future circuits.

But Verstappen’s recent form brings everything into question.

The Verstappen-Red Bull combination, according to McLaren team principal Andrea Stella, could top the standings this year at every remaining track, according to Stella on Saturday in Austin.

However, Stella’s public tone had gotten more positive by Sunday. He was encouraged, he said, by the fact that Norris” had the pace to win the race today”.

On the few more laps Norris was able to run his pace, Stella claimed, this had been demonstrated. Verstappen reaffirmed.

” As soon as Lando was in clean air, “the Dutchman said”, it was very evenly matched or he was slightly faster. Although it wasn’t very easy, we did manage to gap until the end.

Norris’ issue was that he spent the majority of the race stranded behind Charles Leclerc of Ferrari.

Ferrari were the only team to pick the right strategy. Leclerc gained control as he ran past Norris into the first corner while starting on soft tyres.

Norris’ entire first stint was held back by Leclerc. The McLaren driver stayed off his mediums while the pit man came in first, fitting the medium tyres. When Norris finally pitted, fitting the softs instead of the hards that had been the plan at the start of the race, he emerged behind Leclerc again, inevitably.

He had anticipated being able to pass fairly quickly, but Leclerc let him go once more after catching the Ferrari. Norris backed off to cool his tires, and he only managed to finish in second place five laps later.

Had he held on to it at the start, the race could have been very different”. We are reassured that “Stella said”‘s performance was in line with the victory story.

This was especially encouraging because the McLaren drivers’ collision, which had caused them to both lose valuable lessons on the first lap, had cost them both.

That meant McLaren had had to be conservative with their set-up, especially in terms of ride height, because they lacked the necessary data on a track where other teams have in the past been caught out by the bumps and been disqualified for excessive floor wear.

Verstappen closes on both McLaren drivers, and Norris has been closing on Piastri. He was 34 points behind his team-mate after Zandvoort, and he has now reduced that by more than half.

In Monza, Piastri finished ahead of Norris, missed the weekend in Baku, and was forced to draw a winner in Singapore after Norris barged past him at the corner.

This weekend was different. He never felt at ease with the car, lags about 0.2 seconds behind his team-mate, and never moved at all.

According to Piastri, “I don’t believe there’s an overarching trend that things are going awry.” It’s just that this weekend has been has been tough. We’ll make an effort to understand why that was the case. and make an effort to recover the following week.

He denied that the pressure was getting to him.

No, I don’t believe so, according to Piastri. The pressure has persisted throughout the entire year. This weekend, I didn’t really feel like I made any mistakes. Simply put, it wasn’t very quick.

“Some weekends it just doesn’t work for you. And this was one of those. I don’t believe that’s really what pressure looks like when you think you’ve done a respectable job but only the pace hasn’t changed.

I’ve engaged in fights that have come close to or even close to the present. So I’ve got the evidence for myself that things can still turn out well and I still fully believe that I can win the championship.

There is still a long way to go in the championship, the coach said. With five rounds left, Max obviously has a pretty quick rundown, but the gap isn’t exactly small.

As a whole, Norris, Piastri, and McLaren are entering brand-new territory.

The drivers and the team have not fought for a drivers ‘ title before, although Norris threatened Verstappen last year. Stella, who has won numerous close fights, is the only exception, who worked as a race engineer for Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso, Kimi Raikkonen, and Michael Schumacher.

His current job is to maintain the team’s and drivers’ a level playing field and to relieve pressure while concentrating on the task at hand.

” We keep talking about the fact that what we are facing in this moment – which is a tight competition to win races, a tight competition in the quest for the drivers ‘ championship – is what Formula 1 is about, “Stella said.

When we were easily P1, P2, or P1, P2, as in Barcelona, Bahrain, and other locations, it was anomalous. Formula 1 is not intended to be about that.

“It’s a process of getting used to this kind of pressure, which we want to live with maximum intensity and minimum stress.

We don’t want to lose the joy of what we do, they say. We just want to make sure we put ourselves in a position where we can perform at our best, which includes having fun and acknowledging that it’s a privilege to be in this circumstance.

“And it’s a privilege that came thanks to the good work that McLaren, the team, the two drivers, have been able to do.