- Max Verstappen said before the Sao Paulo Grand Prix that he would stop racing in Formula 1 the day he stopped believing he is the best driver on the grid.
- The four-time world champion then started 21st at Interlagos after an engine penalty and finished second, 15 seconds behind race winner Lando Norris, per Motorsport.com.
- Daniel Ricciardo, his Red Bull teammate from 2016 to 2018, says Verstappen will be remembered among the best drivers of all time.
Two Years Without a Title and Still No Doubt
“I always think so,” Max Verstappen said. “Otherwise, I’d stop!”
Verstappen gave that answer in the media session before the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, when he was asked whether he still rates himself as the top driver in Formula 1. The Red Bull driver has gone without the championship for two years. His last title came in 2024. Norris took the title last year, and Kimi Antonelli wrapped up the 2026 championship in Mexico.
Verstappen did not dodge it. He answered with a sentence that sets the terms of his career: the day the belief goes, he goes with it. Sunday’s race at Interlagos then gave that sentence a stage, and the days after added a former teammate’s verdict and Verstappen’s own account of what makes him so quick in the Brazilian rain.
A Belief That Started at 17
Verstappen says the conviction is not new. It goes back to his first season in the championship, when he made his debut with Toro Rosso in 2015 at 17 years old. Verstappen says he did not arrive thinking he knew everything.
“You do have that thought, but in 2015 I also knew that I still had a lot to learn,” he said. “But I already had it in my head that I had the potential to be the best, yes.”
He admits the learning curve and keeps the self-belief in the same breath. The second half of that sentence now has four world championships behind it.
A Season Defined by the Car
Verstappen points to the car when he talks about the title drought. Red Bull began this season with its own power units, built with Ford, and the package started a long way off the pace. Verstappen did not win a race until the Bahrain Grand Prix in October, which moved to Sepang after the race at Sakhir was cancelled.
Wins in Singapore and Mexico followed. He now sits second in the drivers’ standings, 17 points clear of Mercedes driver George Russell as of 10 November, with three races left. Russell and Lewis Hamilton are fighting hard behind him, and Red Bull is also trying to hold McLaren off in the fight for third in the constructors’ standings.
“I think I’ve just had a good season,” he said on the year so far. “It’s just that in Formula 1, you’re also dependent on your car, of course. Lately, we’ve had things reasonably well sorted again. And then the victories come.”
The people inside the team describe the same recovery. Laurent Mekies, the Red Bull team principal, has credited Verstappen for the turnaround, and after Brazil he said no simulation could have predicted a drive like the one Verstappen produced, adding that Verstappen was “beating the sim on a regular basis”.
Verstappen has said that Mercedes and McLaren talks were serious before he stayed at Red Bull. A driver who rates himself the best on the grid stayed with a team that began the year well off the pace, and it has now won three times with him.
Interlagos and the Rain
Sunday’s race made the case in practice. Verstappen started 21st after an engine penalty, on the back row, and fought his way up to seventh in the space of five laps. He finished second, 15 seconds behind Norris, and he believes he could have done better.
It was the third year in a row that Verstappen took a podium at Interlagos from deep on the grid. He has now started from 15th or lower in each of the last three Brazilian grands prix, and those races produced 23 overtakes on his way to three podium finishes. Among the tracks on the calendar from the start of his career, he has his highest podium rate at Interlagos, along with Austin: eight top-three results in 11 races.
Three of those results were wet-weather drives. In 2016, at 19, Verstappen passed Kimi Raikkonen’s Ferrari at Turn 1 when the green flag finally came out after seven laps behind the safety car. He then made an around-the-outside move on Nico Rosberg, the eventual champion, in Curva do Sol. In 2024, starting from 17th, he gained four places on the first lap and won by 19 seconds over Esteban Ocon.
Asked how he finds opportunities on a wet track, Verstappen talked through the start of Sunday’s race.
“After the laps to the grid, I felt pretty confident,” the four-time world champion explained. “I went out and I was like, ‘Oh, low grip’. But then I actually had some cars around me and I was like, ‘No, I think we actually have a lot of grip’.
“Within two laps, I was just flying by cars, almost every corner. We had a lot more grip, I guess, than most in the midfield. I don’t know what lap I was in the top 10, but it all happened very quickly.”
“I knew that the balance we had was there, and that also showed in the first few laps. Unfortunately, that then completely disappeared after the first stint, but luckily at least in the first stint the car was working, and that allowed me to be in this position.”
“We have to understand why or what went wrong with the car as soon as we went to the slick tyres, because even when I switched back to the Inter tyres at the end, the car was night and day different to my first stint, which shows that there is something wrong.”
He also pointed at the circuit. Interlagos has elevation changes and several workable racing lines, and Verstappen says that helps in the dry and gets bigger in the rain.
“I felt comfortable with the car, confident, just trying to find the grip in different places,” he explained. “Then the car is ahead of me, so I try to pass them.”
“This track, of course, also allows you to do different lines, which I think is great because it really helps the racing. It’s a good track in the dry and wet, and that really sets up more overtaking opportunities.”
“You need to feel good in the car. You need to feel comfortable to be able to risk probably a little bit more, and it’s been working for me quite well here.”
Verstappen links his speed in these races to comfort, and comfort lets him risk a little more. He would also like a calmer Brazilian weekend.
“Maybe next year I’d love to start a bit further up front instead of starting from the back or the pit lane, but we’ll find out next year,” said Verstappen, who has now grabbed the runner-up spot in the 2026 drivers’ championship.
What a Former Teammate Sees
Daniel Ricciardo watched Verstappen’s career from the other side of the Red Bull garage. Ricciardo was Verstappen’s teammate from 2016 until the end of 2018. He left F1 in 2024 and is now an ambassador for Ford, whose partnership with Red Bull Powertrains made its race debut this season. The Australian has spoken before about wishing he stayed at Red Bull in 2018. On the podcast he gave his view of the driver who stayed.
“I look back on my time as team-mates with Max very fondly; it was a cool time,” Ricciardo said on the Cars and Culture with Jason Stein podcast. “And yes, there were moments of intense rivalry and competition and all of it, but it made us push ourselves to another level. I loved that.”
“Of course, he has gone on and done so much, and he’s going to go down as one of the best ever, no doubt about it. He’s an insane talent.”
Ricciardo also spoke about the Ford project. The first win for the partnership came at Sepang, a circuit that means a lot to him. He won the 2016 Malaysian Grand Prix there, leading Verstappen home in a Red Bull one-two.
“Every year he has been with Red Bull, he’s won a race. For them to do it, with Ford Racing this year, to come out and win… I can’t even comprehend,” he said.
“I knew a bit about the project and what they were building, but I can’t comprehend everything that has gone into it. And for them to go and win in their first season together, there is no better guy to do it than Max.”
Red Bull now has more grand prix wins than Ferrari this season, three to the Scuderia’s two. Ricciardo launched a collaboration between his Enchante brand and Ford Racing at the start of the year, and he says he still talks with people at the team.
“The whole thing has been awesome,” he said. “I sent Max and quite a few others in the team that I still talk with a message after, to share my congrats and happiness.”
“It was received well; there are a lot of good people in that team.”
Three Races, One Question Answered
Verstappen’s answer to the best-driver question changes nothing in the standings. What he holds is second place in the drivers’ standings with three races left, 17 points ahead of Russell, and a car that has returned to the front after a season that began far off the pace.
He has set his own terms for the day he leaves, and that day has not arrived. A comeback from 21st to second, eight top-three results in 11 races at Interlagos and a former teammate who calls him one of the best ever give him the evidence to keep answering the question the same way. The next test is to hold off Russell and Hamilton, and to find out whether the car that went “night and day” on slicks in Brazil can stay on his side for the rest of the year.
