{"id":278152,"date":"2025-11-12T10:26:11","date_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:26:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/278152\/"},"modified":"2025-11-12T10:26:11","modified_gmt":"2025-11-12T10:26:11","slug":"verstappens-f1-brazil-gp-podium-charge-as-sensational-as-his-2024-victory","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/278152\/","title":{"rendered":"Verstappen’s F1 Brazil GP podium charge “as sensational” as his 2024 victory"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Verstappen<\/a>\u2019s remarkable Formula 1 victory in last year\u2019s Brazilian Grand Prix was on the same level as his 2025 Interlagos drive, Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies has claimed.<\/p>\n

Verstappen\u2019s last two races in Sao Paulo featured some of the most impressive recovery drives in recent history.<\/p>\n

In the wet 2024 race where many drivers made mistakes, the Dutchman jumped from 15th to 11th on the opening lap and fought his way up to sixth until a well-timed red flag propelled him to second place behind Esteban Ocon<\/a>. Verstappen dominated the remainder of the race, winning by 19.5 seconds from the Alpine<\/a> driver.<\/p>\n

This time around, the track was dry but Red Bull suffered an ignominious double Q1 exit in qualifying \u2013 a first since 2006. The team opted to breach parc ferme in order to tweak Verstappen\u2019s suspension set-up and give him a brand-new power unit, paving the way for another recovery despite a pitlane start.<\/p>\n

Verstappen completed nine overtakes on his way to third place, and arguably was the fastest driver in the race, with his quickest 10 laps averaging 1m12.971s; Oscar Piastri<\/a> was second in 1m13.007s, Alex Albon<\/a> third in 1m13.099s. One should note those three drivers stopped late in the race and therefore had fresher tyres on low fuel.<\/p>\n

\u201cCredit to Max for the sensational drive,\u201d Mekies said. \u201cHe won last year here from P16 on the wet [P17 on the grid, but two drivers ahead did not start]. I think we would probably agree that it was as sensational as last year to bring it to P3 from the pitlane on a dry, relatively uneventful race.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"Laurent <\/p>\n

Laurent Mekies, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Hector Vivas \/ Getty Images<\/p>\n

Verstappen achieved this performance despite a lap-seven pitstop for a puncture, which fortunately happened during a Virtual Safety Car intervention and allowed him to get rid of the unfancied hard rubber \u2013 but pushed him onto a three-stop strategy.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn fairness, we were a little bit helped in our disadvantage by the VSC, so it has limited a little bit the loss, but we’ve lost something for sure,\u201d Mekies acknowledged. \u201cIf you go a few laps longer in the whole sequence \u2013 hard, medium \u2013 then maybe at that stage you don’t do that final stop.\u201d<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

Verstappen\u2019s drive also earned him plaudits from the competition, with the Red Bull driver nearly snatching second place away from Mercedes<\/a> rookie Andrea Kimi Antonelli<\/a>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWell, it’s quite interesting, the big step they made today,\u201d Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff commented. \u201cFresh engine obviously always helps, like we had with Lewis [Hamilton] back in the day.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut you never discount Max, even if he starts from last. A few years ago it was a wet race, so you kind of get your head around it, but that was a dry race \u2013 that’s the reason why he’s a four-time world champion.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Autosport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen\u2019s remarkable Formula 1 victory in last year\u2019s Brazilian Grand Prix was on the same level as…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":278153,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[120293,49,48,578,576,577,1885,2190,126925,120292,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-278152","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-formula-1","8":"tag-autu00f3dromo-josu00e9-carlos-pace","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-f1","12":"tag-formula-1","13":"tag-formula1","14":"tag-max-verstappen","15":"tag-red-bull-racing","16":"tag-red-bull-verstappens-f1-brazil-gp-podium-charge-as-sensational-as-his-2024-victory","17":"tag-sao-paulo-gp","18":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278152","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=278152"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/278152\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/278153"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=278152"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=278152"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=278152"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}