ROUND 21: 🇧🇷 Brazil
FORMULA 1 LENOVO GRANDE PRÊMIO DE SÃO PAULO 2024
Circuit stats
- Circuit name: Autódromo José Carlos Pace
- First Grand Prix: 1973
- Number of laps: 71
- Circuit Length: 4.309 km
- Race Distance: 305.879 km
- Lap record: 1:10.540 Valtteri Bottas (2018)
- 2023 winner: Max Verstappen
You can’t ignore that Max was given a free pitstop. Would Max have won even if he hadn’t? Maybe. But after he was given the free pitstop, it was a sure thing that he was going to be in the top 3 ahead of George and Lando.
I agree that the red flag made it easy for him to win, but not because of the free pitstop, it’s because Merc and McLaren made the wrong strategy call.
Everybody knows that if the race conditions require wets there’s a high chance the race is called off. Both Merc and McLaren pitted before the worst rain which means they weren’t waiting to see if the race is called off. Had the race been called off I don’t think people would be looking at Max. I think people would be questioning why Merc and McLaren decided to pit early. The red flag was beneficial to Max because Merc and McLaren made the wrong call by pitting early.