“This year, we just had a really tough first half of the season, as everyone knows. But to still be in this fight—at the same time, I think we can be really proud of it because in the middle of the season, at some point, it was almost – not like you lose motivation – but you don’t really see a way forward of actually winning again in this season. It’s almost like you have to hope that 2026 would be better,” said Verstappen the reigning world champion since Abu Dhabi 2021 in the post-race press conference.

“But we definitely made some really good steps with the car, and in some weekends, for sure, we were in a very competitive state, I would say, where we could win races. But at the same time, we’ve also won races where maybe we shouldn’t have, like today, by making the right call as a team. And then, of course, it’s still up to me to execute it in the best way possible.

“But that’s, at the end of the day, also a proper team effort. The way I work with my race engineer, with GP, and also the guys in the background – the whole team very close to me – I think we’re really well integrated, and we know exactly what we need to ask of each other. That probably helps also when you’re in a battle like this, when you’re not the quickest, but you still pretty much maximize everything you’ve got,” said Verstappen.

Piastri’s Thoughts

Given that he has to make an extra pit stop, Piastri almost caught Verstappen – closing the gap to 8 seconds when the checkered flag dropped.

“You know, clearly, we didn’t get it right tonight. I drove the best race that I could, as fast as I could, and yeah, there was nothing left out there. So tried my best, but it wasn’t to be tonight unfortunately…. I think in hindsight it’s pretty obvious what we would have done, but I’m sure we’ll discuss it as a team….Yeah, I mean it’s not all bad, obviously. It’s been a really good weekend. The pace has been very strong, but yeah, obviously a little bit tough to swallow at the moment,” Piastri said post race.