MONDAY MORNING DEBRIEF: Exactly how did Verstappen negate a brake problem to rise from P6 and take the win?

/MMD-USA-2023.webp)
Everyone was assuming that Max Verstappen would win the United States Grand Prix despite starting only P6. The lap he’d had deleted for track limits in qualifying would have been pole, after all. And he’d totally blitzed Saturday’s Sprint event from pole, pulling out 9s on Lewis Hamilton’s upgraded Mercedes in just 19 laps.
But Verstappen himself wasn’t so sure, and knew he had a very tough job ahead of him. To get past five cars while keeping the delicate tyres in shape on a track which induces super-high rear temperatures would be a challenge. Furthermore, around the Circuit of The Americas the RB19 wasn’t as quick as usual.
Next Up
Related Articles
Formula 1 to return to Portugal in 2027 and 2028
Brown insists McLaren ‘won’t change the way we race’
F1 AcademyHaas name Countryman as 2026 F1 ACADEMY driver
ExclusiveHow Norris made his school teachers ‘enormously proud’
Power RankingsWho did our judges rank as the best F1 driver of 2025?
Winners & Losers5 Winners and 5 Losers from the 2025 season
