Former F1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer believes the drivers’ championship will be \u201call to play for\u201d as he expects Max Verstappen to come out on top in Brazil.<\/p>\n
With just four rounds remaining in the season, Brazil is the next stop on the schedule, a grand prix the Dutchman has won three times in the past.<\/p>\n
Verstappen currently sits 34 points down on championship leader Lando Norris, who dominated the Mexico City Grand Prix last week.<\/p>\n
Norris is now one point ahead of team-mate Oscar Piastri, having taken over the lead of the standings for the first time since April following his win at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriquez.<\/p>\n
While Norris has been the driver in form at McLaren of late, Szafnauer highlighted the ever-present threat of a dramatic shift swinging in one driver’s favour.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt could change, and like I say, it’s going to be the driver that makes the least mistakes or doesn’t have a DNF because of either a failure or crash, will win it,\u201d Szafnauer exclusively told RacingNews365.<\/p>\n
\u201cOn the competitiveness front, they [Norris and Piastri] are pretty similar, and in points, they’re pretty similar – one point, this late in the season.\u201d<\/p>\n
\t\t\t\t\tMax Verstappen predicted to win Sao Paulo GP<\/p>\n
Prior to Mexico, Verstappen enjoyed a strong run of form with three grand prix wins in four events.\u00a0<\/p>\n
It saw him dramatically reduce the championship deficit from 104 points to become an outside consideration in the championship battle as he seeks to add a fifth title to his list of successes.<\/p>\n
Szafnauer believes Verstappen enters the upcoming Brazilian Grand Prix, which will have more points on offer due to the sprint format, as the favourite.<\/p>\n
\u201cBrazil will be telling, Max is great in Brazil,\u201d\u00a0he said. \u201cI can see him winning Brazil.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd if that’s the case, that gap will get even smaller, so it will all be to play for.<\/p>\n
\u201cLike I said Max is a little bit less risk-averse and he’s got the skill to do it. So let’s see, it should be good fun going into the last four races.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen ended the Mexico City Grand Prix in third, having endured a dramatic opening lap which saw him skate across Turn 1 after locking up his tyres.<\/p>\n
When it was pointed out to him that it was an example of being willing to take risks in the late stages of the season, Szafnauer replied: \u201cBut that\u2019s Max. And you got to commend him for that.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just a great, great racing driver. And [he has] less to lose.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former F1 team principal Otmar Szafnauer believes the drivers’ championship will be \u201call to play for\u201d as he…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":251838,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-251837","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251837","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=251837"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/251837\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/251838"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=251837"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=251837"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=251837"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}