Max Verstappen says the pressure in the championship fight is not on him but on McLaren’s two drivers, who could be distracted by battling each other ahead of this weekend’s Sao Paulo Grand Prix.
Lando Norris leads Oscar Piastri by one point with four races remaining, while Verstappen has been in good form of late with three wins and three podiums in the past six races, leaving him 36 points clear of Norris. Verstappen said his performance and ability to get back into the fight has already led to success this year, meaning he has nothing to lose no matter how the final race unfolds.
“There’s no pressure for me,” Verstappen said. “Even if I didn’t win, I know I had a really good season. I’m happy to say that trying to replicate what I’ve done with the people on the grid is very difficult.”
“We have to be realistic about the chances we had throughout the season. The fact that we’re still talking about going into this fight is already remarkable in the first place.”
“Certainly, it has to do with the team’s turnaround. They never gave up and that’s the strength of the team. Still, I think it’s pretty impressive that we’re talking about coming into this battle with a 100-plus point lead.”
With McLaren’s two drivers in the lead, Verstappen said he would rather have the performance advantage that Norris and Piastri have had for most of the season, but the fact that they are competing against each other as much as he is could work in his favor.
“Certainly at McLaren there may be a bit of a distraction between the two drivers, but at the same time they still have a very fast car,” he said. “So if you tell me what you want, just let me know. I don’t care anyway. Give me the fastest car and I’ll drive as fast as you need.”
“That might be good for me, but at the same time we need to make sure we have a faster car. We need to be in front of them. It’s as simple as that.”
Verstappen also feels Red Bull needs a weekend to close the gap significantly, and sees Mercedes and Ferrari potentially having a role to play if either team can be particularly competitive at the upcoming venues.
“First of all, we need to be faster than them and close the gap until the end of the season,” he said. “So, we’ll see. We’ve had some good rounds where the gap has closed. But after four races, there’s still a pretty big gap left. We need to get more points every weekend, and it’s not that easy.”
“So if you told me what the 2023 season was going to look like and you told me I was 36 points down with four races left, I’d be like, ‘Oh, no problem. It’s easy.'” But of course this season was a little different.
“In the end, it’s up to us to optimize everything and make the weekend successful. Besides, we will probably need a little bit of luck in one round to create a bigger offset. But we are going to give everything, and we don’t know if it will be enough at the end of the year. But we don’t have much to lose, which means that in the worst case we will be third and in the best case we will win the championship.”
