Verstappen: I liked the race, it was a lot of fun!

Max Verstappen won the Las Vegas Grand Prix, but had to fight for his 53rd victory as the race was eventful for him. Sergio Perez also had many adventures and the Mexican eventually finished third.

Max Verstappen (1st): “The race was difficult, but I tried to get ahead at the start. Both me and Charles Leclerc braked very late in Turn 1 and in my case the grip just disappeared and we both ended up off the track.

The stewards fined me for this, which obviously put us at a bit of a disadvantage. I had to get ahead of quite a few cars and then the safety car came out, so there was already a lot going on at that point.

And then I just attacked with full force, but to catch up with the leaders I had to overtake several cars. But you saw that DRS works very effectively on this track, so even if you take the lead, if the opponent behind you can use DRS, he still has the opportunity to counter-attack you, and this contributed to a great fight on the track. It was certainly a lot of fun!

Talking to George Russell about the incident, we were lucky, there was minimal contact, although from the outside it looked like the car was damaged. But the front wing structure is intact, although this is still not an ideal situation. After that the understeer got worse, but luckily we still managed to win.

I hope the fans had fun, and we certainly enjoyed the race! I’m already looking forward to returning here next year and let’s hope the second Grand Prix at this circuit won’t be worse.”

Sergio Perez (3rd): “The start of the race was very difficult, the car was badly damaged. The front wing was broken, causing us to roll back to the back of the pack almost immediately. But then we managed to overtake our rivals’ cars one after another, and everything went quite well.

In the first segment we showed a very confident pace, which allowed us to return to the battle for high positions. Thanks to the safety car we were able to take the lead when I was able to stay ahead of Charles Leclerc.

But after that I couldn’t get away from him anymore, because the wings on my car are set to too high an angle of attack, which meant I lacked a little speed on the straights. And then Max overtook us and was able to stay ahead of both of them.

The gusts of wind also made it difficult, causing me to lock my wheels several times, but luckily I was able to stay on the track.

At the end of the race we were struggling with Charles and I didn’t expect him to attack. He was 0.7 seconds behind, but in the braking zone he was able to overtake my car and take the lead, so we can congratulate him and Max, they did a great job.”