SAO PAULO (AP) \u2014 Four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen considers his race last year at Interlagos in the pouring rain \u2014 when he moved up from 17th at the start to win the Brazilian Grand Prix \u2014 to be a career highlight. <\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t too far from matching that feat on Sunday after starting the 2025 race in the pit lane and finishing on the podium. <\/p>\n
Verstappen had been set for a frustrating weekend in Sao Paulo after he qualified only 16th for the race. The Dutch driver even said he had lost any chance of lifting the title this season. But then his team spent Saturday night making sweeping changes to his car, including a new engine. <\/p>\n
All that effort paid off and kept alive Verstappen\u2019s long shot this year at a fifth title. His surprising third place put him on 341 points in the drivers\u2019 championship. With three races left, he\u2019s 49 points behind overall leader Lando Norris, who won the Brazilian GP. Norris has a 24-point advantage over McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri in second place. <\/p>\n
Verstappen said it could have been much worse. <\/p>\n
\u201cTo be in the podium from the pit lane, I didn\u2019t expect at all,\u201d Verstappen said at a press conference after the race. \u201cNo idea (what will happen in the final three races). Impossible to know.\u201d<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s chances almost vanished Sunday when he was already in 13th position and had a puncture, which forced him to make a fourth pit stop, unlike most of his rivals.<\/p>\n
But his newer soft tires in the final stint of the race made Verstappen even faster, which allowed him to overtake Mercedes\u2019 George Russell for third place and challenge Kimi Antonelli for second. The Italian rookie managed to keep his position.<\/p>\n
Verstappen moves on to the Las Vegas Grand Prix, where he finished fifth last year which was enough to clinch his fourth straight title. <\/p>\n
\u201cI think for us now to the end it is trying to just have these highlights, have good race weekends and see what we can do to the end,\u201d he said. \u201dWe also still want to analyze from the whole weekend, but at least the race was very promising.\u201d<\/p>\n
___<\/p>\n
AP auto racing: https:\/\/apnews.com\/hub\/auto-racing<\/p>\n
Mauricio Savarese, The Associated Press<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAO PAULO (AP) \u2014 Four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen considers his race last year at Interlagos in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":273127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-273126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=273126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/273126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/273127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=273126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=273126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=273126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}