After his tense Japanese Grand Prix win Max Verstappen quipped “you wouldn’t have seen me” if he had been driving the McLaren car.
Verstappen finished ahead of McLaren pair Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri on Sunday, having snatched pole from under their noses a day earlier.
Verstappen nearly lost the lead to Norris at his pit-stop and said after the race he had two orange cars in his mirrors the whole race.
The Dutchman joked that he could have won comfortably in either car.
“I’m very happy with what I’m doing,” he told Dutch TV station ViaPlay. “I don’t even want to think about if I’d been in that other car [McLaren]. Then you wouldn’t have seen me!”
His performance earned plaudits from across Formula 1, with Fernando Alonso labelling his pole position lap “magical” and Red Bull boss Christian Horner suggesting on Sunday it had been the four-time world champion’s best weekend in F1.
“When I came here, I didn’t expect to win here – and after Friday, not at all,” Verstappen said. “Starting on pole was the most important thing this weekend. McLaren was faster I think, but they couldn’t get into the DRS to make a move.”
Alonso suggested Verstappen alone is making the difference, with Red Bull struggling to get on top of its RB21 car since preseason.
The consensus in the paddock is that McLaren still has the strongest car by a margin.
Despite that, Verstappen has moved to within a point of title favourite Norris after three races.
When asked by ESPN on Sunday evening if what he’s doing at the moment felt as special to him as it did to everyone was watching, he said: : “Yeah, it does. It also means that I really care, even though, of course, it’s not been the easiest start to the year for us. You know, we are not where we want to be in terms of performance. I think that’s no secret. But, yeah, this weekend, yeah, it’s been really, just really, really nice.
“I don’t listen to the positives and the negatives. I’m just in the middle, you know, so I just focus on my own performances. Just keep working, keep grinding.”
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