• Sport

Verstappen the big winner in Vegas

• 5 Hours Ago - 2024-11-25 00:00:00

During the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Max Verstappen joined a league of greats alongside Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel as a four-time Formula One world champion. The list of drivers who have clinched four world championships in consecutive years is not much longer, with Juan Manuel Fangio (1954–1957), Sebastian Vettel (2010–2013), and Lewis Hamilton (2017–2020) accompanying Verstappen (2021–2024) in that elite group.
While Verstappen alluded to retiring from F1 at a young age prior to the race, he bluntly stated in media sessions with Road and Track that retirement was on the cards if the 2026-spec cars did not pique his excitement. He added that he has no desire to break the elusive record for the most F1 championships, which is currently jointly held by Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton.
"The amount of races, how much you're away from home—it's demanding. It doesn't matter if you're very successful or not; for me, that doesn't matter. Of course, we've already won a lot in Formula 1... For me, it's not that I have to stick around and try to prove myself. I don't have this desire to win eight or nine titles," Verstappen said before the race in which he secured his latest championship.
After the race, the champion appeared elated, noting his pride in this milestone.
"It's been a long season, and of course, we started off amazingly—it was almost cruising—but then we had a tough run. As a team, we kept it together and kept working on improvements. I still prefer last season, but this season has taught me many lessons, and I am very proud of how we handled it as a team," Verstappen told Jenson Button and Terry Crews in his post-race interview.
"He had a dominant car at the start of the season and caught the wins when he needed to. Then, I genuinely thought he wasn't going to win this championship, but he delivered week in, week out, and got the best result the car was capable of while his rivals didn’t. I thought it was going to go right to the wire," said Las Vegas winner George Russell of Verstappen in the FIA's post-race press conference.
MERCEDES
Following comments by Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff about the "shelf life" of a driver, Lewis Hamilton (the second-oldest driver on the grid) delivered an impressive recovery drive, starting from P10 and finishing P2, just behind George Russell. This marked Russell's third F1 race win overall and his second of the season.
"I think we won the race in stint 1," said Russell in the post-race press conference, sharing his optimism for Qatar.
"I think we've got a good shot in Qatar, to be honest. I wanted to keep my brand-new engine for next week and use the old engine—I'm quite glad we didn't do that now," Russell added.
When questioned on the possibility of delivering a better performance had his qualifying session provided a stronger starting position, Hamilton opted to let bygones be bygones.
"It doesn't really matter, does it, at the end of the day? George did everything he was supposed to do, and I'm happy for him," he said.
Regarding his expectations for Qatar, Hamilton shared that the reasons behind their car's performance still eluded the team.
"I don't think anyone in the team knows why we are as quick as we are," he admitted.
FERRARI
While Ferrari extended their lead over Red Bull and reduced McLaren's advantage in this race, Carlos Sainz shared that he felt unable to extract maximum performance from his car. He explained that the tyres on his Ferrari grained more than expected, forcing him to preserve them instead of pushing the machine to its limit.
"Today Mercedes was just the quicker car," he said after placing third in the race.
Sainz anticipates that Ferrari may struggle for pace in Qatar next week. When asked about his disgruntled teammate after the race, Sainz acknowledged his own dissatisfaction.
"I guess he's not happy, but I am also not happy with how things played out at the time," he said, hinting at a pit stop call that was aborted after Sainz had already entered the pit lane during the middle stage of the race.
DNF
Both Alexander Albon of Williams and Pierre Gasly of Alpine retired from the race due to power unit issues, their respective teams confirmed in press statements.
"After the high of yesterday with our qualifying performance and strong grid position, today is a tough one to take. We knew the race would be challenging, but in the end, we weren’t able to truly show our potential after an issue with the car forced us to retire," said Gasly in the team's statement. He had started the race in third place following a stellar qualifying performance and came off the high of a double podium at the previous Grand Prix in Brazil.