How Verstappen’s Brazil brilliance cools F1 title fight that had got needlessly uglier

The faces of Red Bull team boss Christian Horner and McLaren driver Lando Norris said it all in the deafening aftermath of the Brazilian Grand Prix.

The relief was breaking across those respectively long furrowed brows. A sudden pressure release squirting uplifting and cooling air as if it were illicit water on inner tyre tread.

The 2024 Formula 1 title is now essentially done, the relentless questioning of the contenders set to rescind, all with Max Verstappen’s superb win in Brazil. It soothed a championship battle that had got horribly ugly.

Verstappen was letting off steam of his own on the podium. Rejoicing in what is remarkably his first win since holding off Norris back in June’s Spanish GP. Once again, he had delivered magic at a wet Interlagos – one of F1’s best spectacles.

Verstappen’s first lap was indeed worthy of Horner’s “up there with Donington 1993” comparison. His confidence to immediately power around two cars at Turn 3 – where he’d shone so strongly here back in 2016, a performance that featured a pitstraight gaffe of which there was no repeat last Sunday afternoon – was superb.

That was allied with how well the Red Bull starts in low-grip conditions. And yet Verstappen’s confidence to pull dive after dive at Turn 1 knowing any race-ending contact would blow the title fight wide open with Norris starting ahead was impressively unwavering. Even for a man so iron in his desire to be forever unyielding.

Verstappen’s charge through the field was one of the performances of the season

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

His move to finally seize the race lead at the second post-red flag safety car restart from the race’s other star, Esteban Ocon, came out of nowhere. The world champion had lost ground as the Alpine powered away with Verstappen-esque poise on a very tough day for all involved. The Red Bull was so far back as the braking zone approached.

But Verstappen nailed it while Norris was slipping off the road in the background at Turn 1 under pressure from Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc – the only driver to offer the winner any resistance on his rise. In one corner the 2024 season was encapsulated.

Norris erred when perfection was needed. Verstappen commanded with an RB20 back on song. Leclerc showed more mettle amid Ferrari’s own wild performance swings these days.
And, in the brief battle before the red flag and Leclerc’s green-flag pitstop, hypocrisy raged on the radio waves.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but to see Horner and Verstappen’s fans complaining about an iffy-looking race control call, given the Dutchman was the beneficiary of the greatest handout from such in F1’s history at Abu Dhabi 2021, was truly pathetic

“He was squeezing me onto the while line, not leaving a car’s width,” cried Verstappen. That’s despite Leclerc having given him room and not imperilled the lines that were so disgracefully crossed in 2024’s previous two events. And it wasn’t the day’s only toxicity.

After being dumped out of early Sunday morning’s surprise qualifying session in Q2, Verstappen had raged at what he viewed as “bulls***” race control decision-making.

This is exactly what the FIA is trying to stamp out with its ill-defined and handled curse crusade amid accompanying concerns for the wellbeing of race officials, and it unleashed the online vitriol torrents. This came the day after the decision to wait an age to activate the Virtual Safety Car when Nico Hulkenberg pulled off in the sprint race.

Two wrongs don’t make a right, but to see Horner and Verstappen’s fans complaining about an iffy-looking race control call, given the Dutchman was the beneficiary of the greatest handout from such in F1’s history at Abu Dhabi 2021, was truly pathetic.

On a super-sized F1 Sunday, Verstappen showed both of his incredible and inexcusable sides

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

Sometimes, these things just happen. And until evidence of a conspiracy emerges – as with Red Bull’s tyre water-cooling trick suspicion – they can only be treated as such. The scale needed to keep such a ruse quiet makes it so improbable, but this didn’t hold back the howls. These reappeared on Sunday morning when race control took 50 seconds to red flag Q2 after Lance Stroll’s first crash of the day.

This enraged Red Bull – even though Verstappen had been eliminated by not getting a better lap in immediately after the previous Q2 restart, as Norris had managed.

Horner’s “if they’d red-flagged it immediately, there’s time for another lap” theory, with only 1m37s left on the clock when Stroll crashed, is shattered immediately. This is from taking qualifying’s quickest red flag call (eight seconds after Alex Albon’s day-ending Q3 crash from yellows first being displayed) and applying that hypothetically to Stroll’s case instead.

There was just barely enough time for anyone to get out of the pits and start a lap given the times were coming in around the 1m25s-mark – let alone from the pitlane’s far end, as Red Bull enjoyed as the 2023 constructors’ champion.

Verstappen’s reaction is exactly what the FIA should be penalising – not naughty press conference faux pas, intentional or otherwise.

Now, the race result will shove this unedifying episode into oblivion on F1’s history book pages, into which Verstappen has a real shot of one day going down as the greatest ever.

But, if he wants to achieve that without relying on the overwhelming title and victory statistics he could still one day earn, those Austin and Mexico professional fouls will have to stop for good. Leclerc’s tactics of last Sunday show the way forwards.

Leclerc was Verstappen’s biggest challenger in on-track battles in Interlagos, which sparked a retort from the Dutch driver

Photo by: Lubomir Asenov / Motorsport Images

The upcoming Qatar GP racing guidelines rewrite may take that out of Verstappen’s hands, but even with what had come before it was still so pleasing to see his greatest of races play out without a single real moment of racing controversy.

Verstappen himself insisted how at the start of the Senna S “the camber helps you naturally a little bit”. But he did all the dives, the daring, the destruction of the field and with it, surely, Norris’s slim title chances.

And for that alone, Verstappen, deserves nothing but the heartiest of congratulations.