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Max Verstappen retains F1 title lead after taking second in São Paulo
A 15th podium of the season in Brazil leaves the Red Bull Racing Honda star with a handy advantage as F1 heads to the Middle East for a trio of races.
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Red Bull Racing Honda'sMax Verstappen will take a 14-point world championship lead into the final three races of a gripping Formula One season after finishing second in the São Paulo Grand Prix at Interlagos, following a race-long battle with Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes.
Hamilton started Sunday's 19th race of the season from 10th place on the grid after a five-place penalty for taking a new engine before qualifying. However, he rose to third within the first five laps, setting up the latest instalment of a battle with Verstappen that has raged since the opening race of the season in Bahrain.
After both drivers made their final pitstops, Verstappen had a 2.6-second lead with 28 laps of the 71-lap race distance to run, with Hamilton chasing him down on tyres that were three laps younger. Verstappen defended strongly into Turn 4 on Lap 48 and kept his lead, but Hamilton came past at the same corner 12 laps from the end of the race, securing his sixth win of the season.
Verstappen retained the championship lead with three races left
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Hamilton eased away to win by 10.496s from Verstappen, with Mercedes' Valtteri Bottas, who started from pole, rounding out the podium.
Verstappen's Red Bull team-mate Sergio Pérez denied Hamilton a world championship point for the fastest lap of the race. The Mexican driver pitted with one lap to go for soft tyres and used them to set a fastest time of 1m 11.010s on his final lap, adding an extra point to the 12 he secured by finishing fourth.
Pérez's fastest lap means Red Bull has an 11-point deficit to Mercedes in the constructors' championship with three races remaining.
Here's how an action-packed afternoon played out in a steaming-hot São Paulo.
Max lives to fight another day
The Brazil weekend was one where, no matter what happened, Verstappen kept finding himself in second place.
São Paulo was the third and final instalment of the all-new sprint race initiative for 2021, with regular qualifying held on Friday afternoon to set the grid for a 24-lap sprint race on Saturday that would set the grid for Sunday's main race. The Dutchman was second to Hamilton in qualifying, but the Brit was sent to the back of the sprint race grid after his car was excluded for a DRS infringement.
Pole for the sprint race didn't last long for Verstappen, Bottas beating him into the first corner and controlling the 24-lap encounter. The championship leader gained revenge on Bottas by making a brilliant start on Sunday, but he could do nothing to resist Hamilton's late-race pace.
After his victories in Austin and Mexico, Verstappen narrowly failed in his quest to win three races in succession for the second time this year – he'd previously achieved the feat in France, Austria and Styria. Sunday's podium was his 15th top-three finish in 19 races this year, a testament to his speed and consistency.
Verstappen and Hamilton had another intense fight up front
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Afterwards, Verstappen said he had given his all.
"We tried everything we could today, of course," Verstappen said.
"I think it was a good battle, but at the end, we just missed a little bit of pace. We gave it all today, and it was a lot of fun. In the end, it didn't work out, but I'm not too disappointed because I think this is a realistic result.
"We still have a good points lead and today was a bit of damage limitation on a weekend where it was a bit difficult for us, but I'm confident at the coming races that we will bounce back."
Red Bull Racing team principal Christian Horner said Verstappen had "put up as big of a defence as we could".
"It's always hard to take a loss when you've led as many laps, but that was against expectation," Horner added. "It's a tough one when you've led 75 percent of the race. I thought Max did a hell of a job to keep Lewis behind as long as he did. We saw yesterday that pace of that car was just unstoppable."
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Pérez plays his part
Like his team-mate, Pérez spent his weekend in Brazil mostly stuck in the same position – fourth in Friday qualifying led to fourth in the sprint. Following a strong start where he slotted behind Verstappen into Turn 4 on Lap 1, he fell to fourth on Lap 30 after Bottas made a pitstop under a virtual safety car period caused by debris on track from Lance Stroll's Aston Martin.
Pérez had a spirited stoush with Hamilton on Lap 18 when the pair passed one another twice in four corners. Still, his race was relatively lonely after the halfway stage before his late cameo to steal the fastest lap from Hamilton, his second fastest lap in a race this season after he'd done the same at Silverstone.
Pérez flew on the final lap to grab an extra point
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Fourth matched the Mexican driver's best showing in São Paulo (previously achieved with Force India in 2016), and he consolidated his fourth place in the drivers' championship, 25 points behind Bottas in third with three rounds left.
"Checo getting that fastest lap at the end was damage limitation, I would say," Horner said.
Gasly goes solo in fight for fifth
Pierre Gasly flew the flag for Scuderia AlphaTauri in the team's fight for fifth place in the constructors' championship with Alpine. The Frenchman scoring six points for finishing seventh to match the six points earned by Alpine's Esteban Ocon (four points in eighth) and Fernando Alonso (two points in ninth).
The two teams are locked together in fifth on 112 points with three races to go; fifth would be the best finish in the constructors' championship for the team formerly known as Scuderia Toro Rosso, which finished sixth in 2008 and 2019.
Gasly stood his ground against an Alpine onslaught
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
Gasly's weekend looked to be heading in the wrong direction after he dropped two places in the Saturday sprint following a "terrible start". He overcame some gearbox gremlins late in the race to retain ninth place in the drivers' championship.
Team-mate Yuki Tsunoda finished 15th on his first visit to Interlagos, a bold decision to be the only driver to start on soft tyres and make early gains in Sunday's race coming unstuck when he made contact with Stroll's Aston Martin on Lap 5. A subsequent 10-second penalty at his first pitstop ruining any chance he had to score points.
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Ferrari kick clear as McLaren stumbles
For the second straight week, Ferrari struck a decisive blow in its season-long battle for third with McLaren, fifth (Charles Leclerc) and sixth (Carlos Sainz). This mirrors their results in Mexico seven days ago and gives the Scuderia a 31.5-point advantage in the constructors' standings.
Sainz grabbed an extra point for finishing third in the sprint race, which only added to McLaren's misery after Lando Norris was just 10th at the chequered flag, finishing a second ahead of Sebastian Vettel (Aston Martin).
It was worse for Norris' team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, who retired with a power unit problem on Lap 50 for his first non-finish since the 2020 season opener in Austria, a span of 34 races.
A step into the unknown
As the past 19 races have shown, 2021 is no normal F1 season. That theme continues with a Middle Eastern trio of grands prix to end the campaign, two of which come at tracks the series has never visited.
The first of them? The Losail International Circuit for the first-ever Qatar Grand Prix on November 21, a 14-hour flight from São Paulo for the third race in as many weekends that will push the stamina of all involved to the limit. Losail is synonymous with MotoGP, having hosted the world's premier two-wheel series since 2004. Next weekend may well be the only visit F1 ever makes there as the Qatar GP is set to be held on a yet to be constructed purpose-built track from 2023 onwards.
Experience of Losail for almost the entire grid is slim to none; Verstappen has never raced there, while Pérez competed in GP2 Asia in Doha in 2009, taking one of his two wins that season in the sprint event.
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