Max Verstappen believes that Ferrari \u201cmade it a little bit difficult for themselves\u201d as their intra-team battle gave him a perfect chance to gain a position and chase down victory at the Mexico City Grand Prix, marking his third win of the season.<\/p>\n
An incident<\/a> with Racing Bulls<\/a>\u2019 Liam Lawson<\/a> and a badly-timed lock-up in Qualifying meant that Verstappen<\/a> started the race from fifth on the grid, but a great start propelled him to P3 on the opening lap.<\/p>\n From there, he capitalised on an off-track moment for Lewis Hamilton<\/a> and Charles Leclerc<\/a> up ahead to move into second place, with the Monegasque later handed a five-second time penalty for leaving the circuit and gaining a lasting advantage.<\/p>\n Red Bull<\/a>\u2019s strategy then saw them call Verstappen into the pits at the same time as Leclerc, allowing him to overtake his penalised rival and secure the race lead, which he maintained all the way to the chequered flag.<\/p>\n \u201cWe gave it everything,\u201d he said after pipping Hamilton by just 0.799s. \u201cThe first start was good \u2013 that, of course, already made my race.<\/p>\n \u201cI think the team also really gave me the right strategy to pit together with Charles and then overtake him in the pit stop because of the penalty. Then it was just fighting to the end, because I think Ferrari today were really fast.<\/p>\n \u201cI do think they made it a little bit difficult for themselves, fighting each other, and that\u2019s why I could capitalise on that.<\/p>\n \u201cI mean, I\u2019ll take it, right? I always try to go for every opportunity and today I saw the opportunity.<\/p>\n \u201cIt was a cool fight until the end \u2013 Lewis was flat-out in my gearbox so I couldn\u2019t afford to make a mistake.\u201d<\/p>\n Verstappen was under pressure from Hamilton on both restarts, respectively the result of Valtteri Bottas<\/a>\u2019 suspension failure and a crash for Arvid Lindblad<\/a> after the Racing Bulls<\/a> driver and McLaren<\/a>\u2019s Oscar Piastri<\/a> made contact.<\/p>\n Hamilton\u2019s failure to find a way past has had an impact on the contest for P2 in the Drivers\u2019 Championship<\/a>, with Verstappen now two points ahead of Hamilton after Kimi Antonelli<\/a> sealed his maiden title<\/a>.<\/p>\n Asked what he can take from the weekend as a whole, Verstappen replied: \u201cIt\u2019s always so difficult around here, this track, to get everything right. It\u2019s so slippery as well, and never easy to feel super confident with the car.<\/p>\n \u201cWe come out of it with a win, so that\u2019s fantastic. We just keep learning from our weaknesses, our strengths, and apply that also for next year.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen believes that Ferrari \u201cmade it a little bit difficult for themselves\u201d as their intra-team battle gave…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":954933,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-954932","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\/954932","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=954932"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/954932\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/954933"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=954932"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=954932"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=954932"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}