Flawless. Unimpeachable. Masterclass. There are so many words you could use to describe Max Verstappen’s run from 17th to the race victory on Sunday, but somehow none of them are enough. This was, I believe, the defining race of Max Verstappen’s career in Formula 1, and possibly the defining race of F1 history. I’ve never seen anything quite like this. On a day when every other driver on the grid was caught up in unforced error after unforced error, Max simply put his head down and screamed through the field on a day when nobody else could find a way to pass. Full stop, this was championship-level driving. In the wet, without DRS to help.
I count myself among Max’s biggest haters. For years I’ve been frustrated by his stone-faced killer mentality, using his car as a weapon in the fog of war. He knows that he can dive-bomb other drivers and come out smelling like a rose because they’ll race fair and give way to him. It’s a ruthless and cutthroat driving style. I didn’t like it when Senna or Schumacher did it either. But none of that was on display last weekend in Brazil as Max did everything he had to in order to climb as high as possible and take advantage when his competitors faltered.
This race was a shit show from beginning to end. Rain pushed qualifying from Saturday to Sunday morning, and wet weather conditions meant a lot of the so-called best drivers in the world couldn’t keep their cars pointed in the right direction. Max was caught out in Q2 with a late red flag while he was on a flyer and got bumped to 12th on the grid. The team chose to change his power unit, incurring an additional five-place penalty, giving him the 17th starting position. A driver starting 17th or worse has only gone on to win the grand prix five times in the sport’s history, and this one is probably the best of them all.
By the end of the first lap Max had already moved up into the points paying positions, getting an incredible start from the moment the lights went out. Admittedly Max gained a position before the race even started as billionaire dipshit nepo baby Lance Stroll spun on his way to the grid and beached the car in the gravel by his own doing.
Throughout a nearly five-hour Grand Prix pockmarked by safety car and red flag conditions, Max managed to keep his car on the island. Of course Max’s incredible drive was helped by some seriously good luck and some strategy from the team. While the leaders pitted for new intermediate wet weather tires, Max stayed out and waited for race control to stop the race as more rain fell, leapfrogging from fifth on the track to second behind Alpine’s Esteban Ocon. It all fell his way when Williams driver Franco Colapinto crashed hard under safety car conditions, bringing out the red flag and garnering him (and Ocon) a free tire change.
Ocon managed to hold Verstappen off for a while, but a restart on lap 43 of 69 saw Max go down the inside at turn one and move into the lead with a clean pass. From 17th to the lead in 43 laps is mighty impressive. I think even if Lando Norris and George Russell had not pitted for fresh tires and waited for the red flag as Max had, they still would not have been able to hold him off for the remaining laps of the Grand Prix, as Max was simply the fastest guy on the track on that day in those conditions.
Settling that argument was the masterclass of driving that Max put on across the closing stages of the Grand Prix. Once he’d found the lead of the motor race, he set about pulling as big a gap from the field as he possibly could. When it came to the checkered flag, Max had set 17 fastest laps, each time going faster than his previous as the track dried out and his fuel burned off. In the end he finished 20 seconds clear of Ocon in second. It was truly a race for the ages, and probably clinched the 2024 title for Max, barring any significant failures in the final three races of the season.
This race was absolutely Lando Norris’ to lose, and he did damn near everything he needed to do in order to lose it. He failed to hold the lead from pole on the first lap (again) and McLaren made a silly strategy error to lose what track position he had. I still don’t like Max, and was hoping someone would be in a position to challenge him this year, but I think this race pretty much proves that Max deserves to be champion again this year. Yeah, he had a fresh engine and a lucky pit stop, but after ten races without a win, this was an impressive return to form. They say rain is the great equalizer.