Verstappen 'Didn't Expect' Norris To Have A Go At Him During Sao Paulo Grand Prix
F1
Red Bull Racing F1 driver Max Verstappen described his battle with Lando Norris for the win of the 2023 Sao Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos Circuit.
Starting from the pole position, Max Verstappen might have expected another straightforward and dominant race, but Lando Norris complicated things a little bit for the Dutchman in Sao Paulo.
The three-time World Champion had a great start off the line and covered Norris going into the first corner, which was the most important part. But the McLaren driver managed to hold on to him.
On lap 7, Norris decided to use all of his battery coming out of turn 12 onto the final straight and rapidly caught up with Verstappen, which caught him off guard. The Dutchman told the media:
"He suddenly closed a lot – I didn’t expect him to have a run into Turn 1! But yeah, I had to use my battery a bit for one lap, into [Turn] 1 and [Turn] 4 to defend, and then I had to, of course, try and maintain that gap."
Verstappen went defensive into turn one covering Norris on the outside, and then had enough battery at his disposal to prevent Norris from catching him going into turn four.
"But I think what also was very important at that stage of the stint was to really look after the tires to make sure that you have a good lap to pit."
As the three-time World Champion said, looking after the tires was essential at that stage of the race, so Norris had to back off after his one attempt.
"Maybe it looked fairly easy from the outside, but I think for most of every stint, Lando was matching my lap times."
At one point in the race, the gap between the Dutchman and the Red Bull driver was 11 seconds. However, Norris managed to close the gap to 8.2 seconds by the end.
"It was always like the last five to 10 laps where it seemed like we had better tire deg. But yeah, at the beginning of every stint, I definitely had to focus a lot and couldn’t afford to make mistakes, and around here, with the high deg as well, it’s not the easiest to drive."
Even though it was not the easiest of the races for Verstappen, he still finished the race with a comfortable margin and collected the 17th win of the season.
"It’s not like you can just relax and let the car just roll into the corners without any consequence. You have to be really on it. Everything we did today also strategy-wise, pitstops were good, so very happy about that."
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