“There were a few moments where I thought we had a good chance of winning the title, but I think the moment I thought we were going to win was after Paul Ricard, when the advantage has increased significantly. We had a fairly competitive car, I knew that the fight with Ferrari would be tight in the following races, but I told myself that what we had achieved was a gap that we could no longer squander “. Like this Max Verstappen during the solitary press conference dedicated to the world champion he indicated which Sunday was decisive from his point of view in the run-up to the second world title achieved yesterday at Suzuka in Japan.
In France at Paul Ricard Charles Leclerc and Ferrari had taken pole position quite clearly and in the first stint of the race the Ferrari driver was able to resist the attacks of Max Verstappen, who to overtake his rival stopped before the Ferrari driver to undercut. Leclerc remained on track without immediately responding to Red Bull’s move and he lost control of his Ferrari at the Beausset corner ending up against the barrier without being able to engage reverse to continue his Grand Prix.
On that occasion, Leclerc took full responsibility for the mistake, stressing that if 32 points had separated him from Max Verstappen at the end of the season, he would have known where he had lost them. Verstappen won the title well in advance instead and the Ferrari driver on the eve of the Japanese Grand Prix instead identified in the Belgian Grand Prix the moment in which he definitively became aware of the fact that he could no longer hope to win the world title.
In France, Leclerc came on the wings of enthusiasm after winning the Austrian Grand Prix, while Verstappen and Red Bull had to deal with the ghosts of a horror-level tire management race at the Red Bull Ring. The technicians of the Milton Keynes team have taken a step back in terms of developments at Paul Ricard and also thanks to Leclerc’s error, a very important victory has come that had led to 63 points of advantage on Leclerc in the league. That large advantage combined with the awareness of having found the car capable of flying to Great Britain before collecting debris gave Verstappen the serenity to continue an overwhelming season from then on embellished with remarkable comebacks as happened in Hungary and Belgium.
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