Intense VC São Paulo! How does the battle between Hamilton and Verstappen or McLaren and Ferrari continue?

The nineteenth event of this season is over. In many ways, the São Paulo Grand Prix was intense. The battle for the title couldn’t be more evenly matched, and there’s also a fierce battle in the constructors’ championship! How did the race in Brazil turn out?

The nineteenth round of the World Championship was finally won by Lewis Hamilton and we must objectively admit that it was a well-deserved victory. As Felipe Massa so aptly said in his post-race interview, Hamilton is not only the best driver of the day, but of the weekend.

He dominated first in the first practice session and then in qualifying. But it was from Friday’s qualifying that Hamilton was subsequently disqualified because of an illegal DRS. Better put, Hamilton’s rear spoiler was more than the prescribed 85 millimetres.

He then put in an absolutely fascinating performance in Saturday’s sprint. As a result of the disqualification, he started from the very tail of the grid, and thanks to some excellent pace and a great performance from his Mercedes, he made it all the way up to fifth.

However, he started Sunday’s race from tenth position due to a penalty for an engine change. After five laps of the São Paulo Grand Prix, he was already in third place. He then worked his way to the front of the race on lap fifty-nine, despite a tough defence from Max Verstappen.

The seven-time world champion at least reduced his points deficit to Verstappen to 14 points. It remains tight in the constructors’ championship, with second-placed Red Bull eleven points behind leader Mercedes.

Unfortunately for McLaren fans, the Woking team is starting to pull the short end of the rope in the battle for third place in the Constructors’ Cup. Perhaps even worse, Ferrari has been catching some very good form in recent races.

If we look at the last five races, the drivers of the Italian team have scored 85 points (44 Leclerc, 41 Sainz), while McLaren has not scored even half – 41 in total (22 Ricciardo, 19 Norris).

The last solid result was recorded by McLaren drivers in Russia, where they scored 19 points. However, as we know well today, Norris deprived himself of his first career win in Sochi and it is safe to assume that the situation would be slightly different again now.

So this is how the final standings of the São Paulo Grand Prix look. The driver of the day is, as we wrote above, Hamilton. One extra championship point for the fastest lap of the race goes to Sergio Pérez.

“We tried everything, but we lacked pace. Anyway, it was a great battle and we’ll try to get back the points we lost in the next races,” Verstappen said in his post-race interview.

“I’m so happy for the amazing support here, but it was an extremely difficult race weekend, one of the hardest of my career. But the team and I did an amazing job. The things that have happened to us just show that it pays not to give up and keep pushing. Whoever wins the title, this race will go down in history,” Hamilton explained in his post-race interview.

Source: F1 Live