Verstappen stays calm in face of Hamilton resurgence
Max Verstappen insisted that he wasn't going to worry about the state of the drivers championship despite the apparent return to form of chief title rival Lewis Hamilton in Sao Paulo.
Hamilton overcome an accumulated weekend penalty of 25 places at Interlagos to sweep to victory over Verstappen in Sunday's race, with the Mercedes looking back to its dominant best in terms of performance.
Hamilton made up 15 places in Saturday's sprint race after being excluded from qualifying for a technical infringement, and completed the job by winning the Sao Paulo Grand Prix from tenth on the grid.
Having taken the lead at the start of the race, Verstappen did his best to defend the position, even forcing both cars off the track at one point, but was ultimately unable to prevent Hamilton passing.
"We tried everything we could today, of course," Verstappen told the media in parc ferme after the race. "It was a good battle, but at the end we just missed a little bit of pace."
He insisted that he hadn't crossed the line in his defence on lap 48 in which he went off track at turn 4 to prevent Hamilton from completing a pass.
"We both braked really late into the corner of course trying to get the position, so I think that was fair enough," he told Sky Sports F1
"But we gave it our all today," he added. "I'm not too disappointed, because I think this is quite a realistic result. At least we had a bit of fun battling out there."
Having taken second place in both the sprint race and the Grand Prix, Verstappen comes away from Brazil with a total of 20 points.
But Hamilton's win means that the gap between them in the overall standings is back down to 14 points with three races remaining.
"We still have a good points lead," he said. "Today was a bit of damage limitation on a weekend where it was a bit difficult for us, but I'm confident that in the coming races we will bounce back."
In the constructors standings, third place for Valtteri Bottas and fourth for Sergio Perez means that Mercedes have opened back up an 11 point lead.
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