Lining up on the starting grid for the São Paulo Grand Prix, the track damp beneath him and the air heavy with the threat of rain, Max Verstappen knew how crucial this race would be. The reigning Formula One world champion was in unfamiliar territory: Starting seventeenth on the grid, with only two cars behind him (and one in the pit lane), and his title rival, Lando Norris, way, way ahead of him on pole position. Advertisement His championship lead, one that had ebbed away in recent weeks to just 44 points after his sprint race penalty on Saturday, looked precarious.
There seemed a real chance that Norris could make the kind of gain on Sunday that would turn the tide in the championship battle. That discounted a drive for the ages from Verstappen. A victory that, of the 62 he has scored to date in F1, except for the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP that clinched his maiden title, could be the most iconic.
It’s the one that will likely be remembered as being instrumental to his fourth world championship. The one that snapped an 11-race winless drought, scored in a car that had long robbed his confidence and is no longer the quickest on the grid, made possible by bravery and brilliance in the trickiest conditions. One race, one performance, turned this from a season slowly moving Norris’ way to Verstappen standing on the brink of yet another championship.
“Wow,” his race engineer, GianPiero Lambiase, said on the radio after Verstappen crossed the line for the first time since the S.
