Lewis Hamilton certain Red Bull's fate is sealed after what Max Verstappen did

07 November 2023 , 06:00

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Max Verstappen took off at the start of the Brazil race and never looked back (Image: Hasan Bratic/picture-alliance/dpa/AP Images)

Lewis Hamilton is worried it will take years for anyone to compete with Red Bull.

Max Verstappen's team secured both 2023 titles weeks ago and have blown away all the competition. Only once has another team tasted victory this year, when Carlos Sainz took advantage of a very rare off weekend for Red Bull to in in Singapore.

With the champions having been focussed on their 2024 car for months now, their rivals hoped they would be able to close the performance gap in these latter stages of the season. But Verstappen continues to prove that his appetite for success is never satisfied.

Lando Norris did all he could to keep the Dutchman honest in Brazil on Sunday, but still he won by eight seconds by managing his tyres and keeping the McLaren at arm's length.

Hamilton was more than a minute behind his rival by the time he took the chequered flag, down in eighth place, to cap a thoroughly miserable weekend for Mercedes. And he's worried that it might be a long time before he can put up a fight against Verstappen's team again.

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"Ultimately, all I can do is try to remain optimistic," the seven-time world champion told reporters after the Dutchman's win in Sao Paulo. "The Red Bull, I think, is so far away I think they're probably going to be very clear for the next couple of years."

One of Red Bull's greatest weapons all season has been lower tyre degradation than all of their rivals. For Mercedes at Interlagos, it was one of their biggest problems, caused in part by a huge rear wing which was destroying their rubber in the corners and creating too much drag on the straights – making them slow everywhere on track.

And they were warned about by a similar outcome in the Sprint a day earlier. "I knew that we would have a difficult day," said Hamilton. "Nothing changed in the car from yesterday to today so I knew it would be a tough one. [In the Sprint] I just ate through the tyres with an unexpected lack of pace. I think I drove better today in terms of at least making my stints, but we were just slow.

"The tyres were always overheating for us. The tyres were overheating, slow on the straights, no grip in the corners. Ultimately, in the moment, it is a step back. But as a team we'll just come together and we'll try and push forward.

"There'll be a lot of analysis this week after today. I'm sure there will be things that will be like, 'Ah, maybe if we had done this, it would have been better'. But I think still, ultimately, the car didn't work here for some reason and that is the way it is."

Daniel Moxon