US Grand Prix: ‘Positive pressure’ for Max Verstappen as he goes ‘steady’ for fifth title

The statistics for the last four races over the past month and a half are absolutely amazing.

After the Dutch Grand Prix, Verstappen was 104 points behind McLaren’s Oscar Piastri in the championship, and 70 points behind Lando Norris. Now, he is 40 points behind the Australian, whose difference between him and his teammate has narrowed to only 14 points.

Verstappen expressed disbelief at what he had achieved. If anyone after Zandvoort had told him this would happen, he said, “I would have told him he was a fool.

“But we found a good way with the car. It’s that simple. Of course, we made some improvements to the car, but we understood our car a little better, as we wanted it to perform better.”

A 64-point lead over four races tells its own story, but how it happened was just as remarkable.

McLaren beat Red Bull during the summer races in Europe – until the Italian Grand Prix in early September, when the updated floor and front wing finally gave Verstappen the balance he had craved all year.

Since then, Red Bull has been the fastest car. Until this weekend in Austin, this could be explained by track characteristics – Monza, Baku and Singapore are all short, slow corners, requiring good braking and traction.

McLaren’s strengths are not in this area, but in the long, medium-speed corners, where they crush everyone.

But Austin is a “normal” circuit, a road circuit rather than a street circuit, and not a high-speed circuit like Monza, with a good range of turns. Verstappen won again.

There are five races remaining, two of which are sprint races. If he continues to get close to the McLaren drivers at the rate he has been, he will win a fifth title in a row, plain and simple as that.