Verstappen: "We just didn’t have the pace this weekend to match them"

Confidence in Verstappen

After just five laps, Verstappen was already second. Was he dreaming of victory at that point? "You obviously have to wait and see a little bit. Quite early on in the race, I saw that was not really on, so I just tried to do the best I could by managing that gap," said a Verstappen who is quite realistic. "We just didn’t have the pace this weekend to match them. I just tried to follow and yeah, it was alright at the end."

Indeed, the 24-year-old Limburger drove the fastest lap of the day which earns him an extra World Championship point. "I did the fastest lap, which I was pretty happy about. At the end of the day it’s one extra point. Everything counts at the moment but yeah, overall I would say this weekend wasn’t the best for us, but there’s still two races to go and a lot of things can happen still, so we’ll see."

Keep fighting

Verstappen is defending an eight-point gap in the world championship with two GPs to go. If Hamilton wins in Saudi Arabia in two weeks' time and drives the fastest lap and Verstappen finishes on P2, the men will go into the final race with the same number of World Championship points. "Yeah, it’s exciting. I would of course have liked to make it a bigger gap, but when you don't have the pace, it’s impossible to do that, so we’ll just try to be better, and come back strong."

Like the Losail International Circuit, the track in Saudi Arabia is completely new to Formula One drivers. Abu Dhabi has been raced on in F1 since 2009 and Hamilton has won five of the 12 races there. Verstappen managed to do so once, at the finale of the 2020 season.