Eleven laps remain of the 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Max Verstappen is 3.6 seconds behind his Red Bull team-mate Sergio Perez. Defeat in Baku, and a 2-2 record from the opening four races of the season, stare back from the leading RB19.
But then that gap starts to come down – quite rapidly at first – to 3.1s. And holds. It creeps up as the Red Bull pair lap Valtteri Bottas. But by lap 47 of 51 it’s on the way down again to a finishing margin of 2.1s. Verstappen has just registered what he considers the worst weekend of his 2023 Formula 1 campaign, with two defeats in the first double-race appearance for the season of the sprint format he detests, plus that ugly episode with Mercedes driver George Russell in the Saturday parc ferme.
But he’s also just made a critical breakthrough that will lead to an unprecedented run of F1 success.
Shortly after this is finally ended by Carlos Sainz’s Singapore GP victory for Ferrari, Verstappen is a triple world champion. Come season’s end, Perez has registered the biggest deficit for a drivers’ standings intra-team 1-2 in F1 history at 290 points. (The previous was Rubens Barrichello’s 67 to Michael Schumacher in 2002, which adjusted for today’s format is 159 and technically trumps the official previous record for any 1-2 gap, Fernando Alonso’s 155-point trailing to Sebastian Vettel in 2013).
PLUS: 10 moments that won Verstappen the 2023 Formula 1 title
“It was maybe not the best stint of my life, but it was just because I was trying out a lot of tools [changes] between brake bias, diff, engine braking,” Verstappen says of the work he was doing behind Perez once he realised the Baku win was lost, which he first alluded to after winning his home race at Zandvoort in August.
“But the end of the stint was actually very strong, where I think already I’d hurt my tyres quite badly from the beginning trying to pass. When I came out, I said, ‘OK, I didn’t win the race but I actually learned a lot for the upcoming races.’”
Verstappen is speaking to Autosport in the Red Bull hospitality tent at the Mexican GP. He’s been a triple world champion for three weeks and his place atop this list secured months before the title was won in the Qatar sprint race. Given the topic of the day is how he’ll have his irregular bodyguard presence back for the Mexico City event, following notably harsh takes on his relationship with Perez in local media, he’s…
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