Max Verstappen suggested he’s still the underdog in the F1 2024 title fight despite possessing a massive 62-point lead over McLaren’s Lando Norris with just three Grand Prix and a Sprint Race to go in the season.
After his victory at the 2024 Brazilian GP around the Autodromo Jose Carlos Pace, the consensus is that the drivers’ championship is effectively wrapped up with the Dutchman’s rival needing to outscore him by over 20 points-per-weekend to even pull level.
But that doesn’t appear to be what Verstappen thinks as he suggests Red Bull’s lack of dry pace means he is still an underdog in the face of Norris, despite the overwhelming lead he has with a handful of rounds to go.
“At the moment it’s difficult to tell,” Verstappen said of securing the F1 title to members of the media, including Total-Motorsport.com. “Because if you look at the last few races in the dry, we didn’t have the pace.
“So it’s not that because we won in the in the rain in Brazil suddenly everything is fixed and everything is looking great.
“It gave me a good position in in the championship, but I also have to be realistic that we’re still not the quickest. I hope that we can be competitive here.”
The picture is that if the Red Bull ace leaves the Las Vegas Strip Circuit on November 24 with a 59-point gap to Norris then he will claim his fourth consecutive title and thus draw level with Sebastian Vettel and Alain Prost in the history books.
Even if Norris wins every single Grand Prix, with the fastest lap, and the Sprint Race and picks up the maximum of 86 points on the board, Verstappen only needs to finish sixth in two of the GPs to secure the crown, essentially ahead of just his teammate and one of the Mercedes cars.
However, despite all of the permutations falling in favour of the 27-year-old, he still feels as though he has pressure on his shoulders and that he must go out onto the track and deliver to the best of his talent or risk losing the championship from an unprecedented position.
“The pressure is I want to always do well every single weekend,” Verstappen added to media. “It’s not necessarily about the about the championship.
“But I’m just trying to enjoy the weekend as well, trying to see how competitive we can be, and the championship is not decided yet, so there’s still points that need to be scored.”
Although he took victory at Sao Paulo’s Interlagos circuit by a commanding 19.4 seconds despite starting 17th, Verstappen is still hungry for every last bit of data that his Red Bull crew can mine from the track and weekend.
So even though he won and effectively secured the title in the process after Norris slipped from pole to sixth, the Dutchman feels the rain proved to be a missed opportunity for the team as the only dry competitive running came during the Sprint Race on November 2.
“I think in the Sprint in in Brazil, in the dry, we were quite competitive,” Verstappen added. “Of course I’m very happy that I won on Sunday but it would have also been very nice to see the base in the drive on a full race distance. Here again [Las Vegas], it’s so different with tyre.
“Just understanding the tyres, how they operate, or making sure that you operate well on both compounds that you use in the race, is going to be very crucial. It’s probably a bit more complicated than most race weekends that we have.”
