Verstappen Secures Seventh Win of Season Amidst McLaren Intra-Team Shift & Ongoing Championship Fight
LAS VEGAS, NV – Max Verstappen clinched his seventh victory of the 2023 Formula 1 season in 15 races at the Las Vegas Grand Prix, a result achieved despite a challenging mid-season period where pace proved elusive. The win intensifies his championship lead as rivals,especially within McLaren,navigate internal performance dynamics.
Verstappen acknowledged the inconsistency of his season, pinpointing specific races as outliers. “Austin and Mexico were quite different to the other races that have not gone so successfully,” he stated during media day.”There, there was a clear pace deficit and something pretty fundamental that just wasn’t working.” He clarified that other struggles stemmed from a series of unrelated incidents. “The other races have just been a combination of different things going wrong. Obviously, Baku was what it was.Singapore from a performance standpoint actually was pretty solid, just the race obviously didn’t pan out exactly how I wanted.” He further explained that despite a sprint crash in Brazil, “the pace was good at points…it was just that there were a lot of things that happened that meant the results weren’t on the table.”
The focus is also shifting to the McLaren pairing of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris. While Piastri initially held a qualifying advantage, Norris has demonstrably improved as the summer break, a trend he attributes to a front suspension geometry tweak introduced in Canada, designed to enhance front-end feel.
Prior to the Dutch Grand Prix, Piastri led Norris in qualifying by a mere 0.099 seconds. However, since Monza, Piastri has out-qualified Norris only once - in Singapore - with the pace gap now widening to 0.226 seconds in Norris’ favor. Norris emphasized the deliberate effort behind this enhancement, stating it was achieved through “hard, focused work.” The onus is now on Piastri to respond to his teammate’s gains.
