MONTREAL — Max Verstappen looks unstoppable at the moment. The reigning world champion has won six of the seven races he has finished this year.
At Sunday’s Canadian Grand Prix, he was made to work for victory right until the line, with Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz chasing him close for 15 laps at the end and finishing 0.9s behind at the chequered flag.
In what is becoming his hallmark, Verstappen was ice cold under that pressure, almost metronomic, lap after lap. He showed it on several occasions last year in similar situations with Lewis Hamilton.
Sainz was unable to get close enough to overtake Verstappen and the mistake he needed to seize the moment never materialised.
“Max is in the form of his life right now, absolutely clinical,” Red Bull boss Christian Horner said after the race.
Horner later added: “He drove some amazing races last year under massive pressure, you think back to Austin and so on. I think he’s been so good under pressure, we’ve seen it so many times this year, Miami, Baku, etc etc. He’s got more experience and he’s just a very complete driver”.
Verstappen was 46 points behind Charles Leclerc after the Australian Grand Prix in April, having suffered two reliability issues in the opening three races. Verstappen’s lead over Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez is now the same amount, with Leclerc, who hasn’t won a race since Melbourne, a further three points back.
It’s effectively a buffer of two whole race victories over his nearest rivals, but F1’s bloated calendar means we are still not at the half-way mark in the season — there are still 13 races left between now and the end of November. While it is easy to start scanning down the schedule of remaining events to see how early Verstappen might wrap things up on this current trajectory, he is not taking anything for granted.
“It’s still a very long way,” Verstappen said in the post-race press conference. “I know the gap of course is quite big, but I also know that it can switch around very quickly.
“I mean, [after] race three I was 46 behind, so we just need to stay calm, we need to focus and we need to improve because today we’re not the quickest.”
Ferrari agreed with Verstappen’s assessment on pace. The team felt it had the quickest car on race day, which flips what the narrative of the season has been so far.
While Leclerc has dominated in qualifying on Saturdays, recently it has been Verstappen and Red Bull…
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