“For both Max and Isack, there are things they want to look into and change overnight. There is a lot of performance that we can extract, and, in terms of lap times, we are still very competitive up there with the rest of the field. The Team are looking into several changes for Max’s car. There were things he was unhappy with, but we know what they are so can work on them. Tomorrow, the forecast is looking wet, and we will have to wait and see if Qualifying happens at the scheduled time, but we will be prepared for all eventualities.”

“It wasn’t too bad,” Max says after the second free practice session at Interlagos. “But we still need to find something. From our side, that has to do with the consistency of the power unit.”

Max continues: “We still have a bit of work to do for tomorrow. Nothing shocking, but we do want to be a little bit better.”

Similar to the previous FP1 in Mexico, several rookies took on driving duties: Leonardo Fornaroli (McLaren), Freddie Slater (Audi), Gabriele Mini (Alpine) Luke Browning (Williams), Dino Beganovic (Ferrari) and Colton Herta (Cadillac). If the later completes a minimum of 100 kilometres in the session, the young American will have secured his superlicense, which makes him eligible to race in F1.

As the session gets underway, it is straightaway busy on the Autódromo José Carlos Pace. With rain expected in FP2, the teams are making the most of the available dry track conditions in the first practice session.

After a challenging start to the season, the Oracle Red Bull Racing driver arrives in Brazil sitting in P2 in the drivers’ championship. “That is a big surprise for me. Our start was not good, but this swing in performance shows this team does not give up. If you hear me complain on the radio, it’s because I’m always looking for improvements.”

Max continued his superb string of results since the summer break by clinching the win at last week’s Mexican Grand Prix. Third placed Kimi Antonelli secured his first world title. “It’s special when you win your first championship, but it does result in a bunch of commitments the next day. That’s not always great, but then again, you’ve achieved the dream to win the championship, which is the most important thing.”

The Monegasque was served a time penalty of five seconds after a trip across the grass in the opening phase, overtaking Ferrari-teammate Lewis Hamilton. Max pulled out ahead of Leclerc after his pitstop, and took the lead.

After qualifying at the Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez, Max explains: “In the stadium section, I had two cars ahead of me, which meant I lost downforce through Turn 12. The car then stepped out more. After that, the McLaren was driving on the right-hand side of the track, where you want to position yourself for the hairpin. I lost my reference point on the right-hand side. That’s a shame, because pole position was within reach.”

Max continues: “Fortunately, the car is better now in qualifying, after we struggled throughout the weekend. We made quite a few changes to the car before qualifying, and it felt much better. In free practice, the car was very difficult to drive and we didn’t have a good balance. In qualifying, it was okay. We’ve made progress. Things came together well on the final lap, but sometimes you have a bit of bad luck.”

“In FP2, the performance of Max’s car was clearly affected by some damage, which we will be able to fix for FP3, whereas Isack’s session was solid overall. Still, we have a lot of work to do. The long run was more or less there, but we have performance to find, as the drivers are not yet happy with the balance. We are confident we can improve that with the set-up for tomorrow."

“The session could probably have gone a little bit better,” Max says after the second free practice session in Mexico. “But we are not too far off either. We just have a bit of fine-tuning to do, but I guess everyone will say that because the car doesn’t feel quite right. I don’t think anyone feels like they have a great time out there in terms of grip.”

Iwasa was not the only rookie to take to Autódromo Hermanos Rodríguez in Mexico City. Leonardo Fornaroli (McLaren), Freddie Slater (Audi), Frederik Vesti (Mercedes), Nikola Tsolov (Racing Bulls), Gabriele Mini (Alpine), Luke Browning (Williams), Ryo Hirakawa (Haas), Colton Herta (Cadillac and Jak Crawford (Aston Martin) all made an appearance in the first session of the weekend. For Slater, Tsolov and Mini, FP1 marked their official F1 debut.

Lewis Hamilton is the first driver to leave the garage when the session gets underway. The Ferrari driver is soon joined by all the other drivers, with the exception of Fernando Alonso. Fans of the Spaniard have the wait a further five minutes before the Aston Martin makes an appearance.

Charles Leclerc is quickest throughout the first half of the session. Although several drivers, including Iwasa and Antonelli, top the leaderboards at some point, the Monegasque keep reasserting himself as the pace setter.

“We had some problems in Austin during the weekend. We’ve tried to learn from that. Some things you can solve straight away, others take a bit of time. Some weekends come together better than others, so hopefully we’ll have a more straightforward race here”, reflected the four-time champion on last weekend’s US Grand Prix.

“It was a trickier weekend for Isack up until Qualifying, as he had a few adjustments to make yesterday and again this morning. But with his engineers at the track and support from Milton Keynes, he kept chipping away. In Qualifying, he unlocked strong pace, and P3 matches his best Qualifying performance of the season. It will be a challenging race, and I think there are plenty of drivers with a chance of victory, but having Max on the front row and Isack right behind gives us a really good opportunity to be in the right battle tomorrow. Congratulations to Alisha on winning the F1 Academy Championship. This is a fantastic achievement and one she thoroughly deserves after an outstanding season.”

“Q3 was not good,” Max reflects after qualifying. “Q1 and Q2 were good, but for whatever reason, I didn’t have a good balance on either set of tyres in Q3. There were no mistakes, but I just didn’t have any grip and started to slide a lot. In the final lap, you could see that it wasn’t going to work with the tailwind. You try to push a bit more and hit a kerb the wrong way, and the car starts bouncing like a kangaroo. So I’m not really happy with Q3, but it’s still P2, and I’ll take that.”

The weather is dry and sunny in Austin as the third and final practice session gets underway. There is no chance of rain, and with temperatures at 27 degrees Celsius, conditions are pleasant. When the pit-lane light turns green, Sergio Perez is the first to head out in his Cadillac. Gabriel Bortoleto and Franco Colapinto follow behind. Max is nowhere to be seen on track in the opening minutes, as the Dutchman is only just making his way into the Red Bull Racing garage and appears in no particular hurry.

Reflecting on Friday at the Circuit of the Americas, Max said: “It’s never easy at this circuit to find a good compromise between the car’s set-up for the slow and fast corners. The bumpy surface makes it even more difficult. We’ve been trying to find a good rhythm and balance in the car, and that’s what we worked on between the first and second free practice sessions. There’s still some work to do, but it wasn’t a bad start to the weekend.”

Afterward, Max shared his thoughts with us: “Overall, we have had a decent weekend. Unfortunately, we made a mistake with the setup of the car in qualifying, which meant that the car was sparking a little bit too much for performance. So, we didn’t qualify where we should have qualified. We adjusted the setup for the race and we were a lot more competitive.”

After the qualifying session, Ben Barnicoat shared: “It was a tough session. We felt like we have been missing a little bit of speed. None of us have been super happy, so we tried a couple of things and obviously it just didn't quite work out. We had a lot of bouncing in the straights, so I think we just missed it a little bit.”

Still, the team will do everything it can to fight its way to the front in the three-hour race, which starts Saturday at 6:00 p.m. Central European Summer Time (CEST). Ben continued: “It’s a three-hour race, we are all going to do our best. It is never over until it’s over in these endurance races. We have got a great lineup, a great team. I still believe we can do it tomorrow. Max has been strong and Chris has been strong, so I am sure we will be okay come tomorrow. We just got it a little bit wrong today, but we know what we did, and we know how to make it better. We are going to go to business tomorrow and try to get to the front.”

Like in FP1, Max is the first driver to get behind the wheel of the Mercedes-AMG GT3. After twelve laps and a personal best of 1:43.482, Ben takes over driving duties and adds another dozen or so laps to the lap tally of Team Verstappen Racing.

Ben Barnicoat said afterwards: “It’s been going pretty well. Obviously I have got some really fast teammates, which has been good. They have been doing a great job. Obviously, today is an important day today: we will try to qualify well and have a good race tomorrow.”

Ben is no stranger to racing Max, having competed against the F1 champ in karts. Now he is working with Max “He is so down to earth, so humble, but extremely talented. He has not driven the car since he did the Nürburgring 24 hours, but it doesn’t take him much time to get up to speed with things. That’s the same for Chris, who has had an amazing season, and he’s going pretty well today. So, I’m going to have to up my game, I think, to keep up with those two.”

Max completed a long first stint, with the initial feedback being positive. “Max has been pretty happy with it. We definitely need to make the car a little bit better. So far the consensus has been that we have got quite a fast car, but it’s not the easiest to drive. And obviously, when you are doing an hour stint, if it’s not easy, it catches up with you”, explained Ben.

“The idea behind doing a long run, is just to try and make things a little easier to get us as well prepared as we can be for, for tomorrow’s race. Especially at night, and this morning with it being a bit cooler is probably the most representative of what it’s going be when it gets dark. So we just wanted to get a good feel for where we’re at then.”

In sunny conditions all three drivers of Team Verstappen Racing (Ben Barnicoat, Chris Lulham and Max Verstappen) took to the Portuguese track. Chris was quickest, but more importantly the outfit was able to clock 43 laps without issue. Max gained valuable track time as well clocking his personal best (1:43.6).

The team was able to work through their program including gaining valuable data, working as a team and practicing the driver swaps. All these factors are of importance with all three drivers scheduled to a one hour stint each in Saturday’s three hour race.

Chalerm Yoovidhya and Mark Mateschitz, Red Bull shareholders, said: “The strength of Red Bull has always come from its people and from creating an environment where talented individuals can achieve extraordinary things together. Laurent has played a crucial role in guiding the team through an important period of transition while maintaining the competitive spirit and the Red Bull principles that define us. This extension reflects our confidence in his leadership and our shared belief in the long-term vision of the team. We are ambitious about what lies ahead and we are committed to building on this momentum together.”

At the start, Max did a superb job of keeping Charles Leclerc in his Ferrari behind him. The Monegasque driver applied pressure during the early stages of the race, but once Max had built up a lead, his victory was never in danger. Kimi Antonelli (Mercedes) also managed to work his way up to an impressive third place.

After clinching the British Formula 4 title, Dries commented: “It is amazing, I am really happy to be champion! It is a special track to do it, I really enjoyed my time out there. I just tried to enjoy it. There wasn’t too much pressure from my side, but obviously I was a bit nervous. I just tried to bring it home to the finish. I knew I did not have to risk too much. It is great to end it like this.”

Dries added: “We all have done a really good job, although at some tracks we struggled a bit more than others, but all in all we have done the best job of everyone. I am really happy with the performance of the team and myself throughout the year.”

“Of course, I’m very happy with pole position, because this was the one I wanted,” Verstappen said afterwards. “It was very close. I think the margins were small throughout all of qualifying.” Max has felt comfortable in the car all weekend, although the Dutchman believes there is always room for improvement. “The car has been pretty strong all weekend. Of course, there are always things that you look into that can be better. But it was enough for pole, so I’m very happy with that.”

The pole position is particularly special for Max. Singapore is a circuit where Red Bull have not always been able to perform at their best in the past. According to the Dutch driver, the change in regulations has played a role. “With the new regulations, our car works a little differently compared to the previous rules, when we were stronger in different areas of a corner,” Max explains. “But we’re happy to take this result. We’re on a positive trend, so it’s for us very special to take pole position here.”

Max was not entirely satisfied despite his Sprint victory. “The start was horrendous again,” Verstappen reflected. “That is definitely something we need to improve. But I saw it coming, because we started in second gear. Hopefully, we learn from it now. If that happens tomorrow and nothing else happens, your race is over.” Russell’s retirement worked in Verstappen’s favour, allowing him to control the race on the streets of Singapore. “Of course, we got a bit lucky with what happened to George,” Verstappen admitted. “After that, you just want to keep the race calm and under control. You know you can’t pass around here, especially in these conditions on intermediate tyres. We tried to bring the car home safely.”

Although Max adds eight points to his tally with the victory, he does not see the Sprint as the main objective of the weekend. The Dutchman is already looking ahead to Sunday’s Grand Prix. “I want to win tomorrow. I don’t see this as a win in the same way as winning a Grand Prix,” he said. “We need to have a good qualifying. It will be close with a lot of cars, so we need to make sure we are the best. Hopefully, it will be a good battle.”

“On the other side of the garage, we were managing an issue, and Isack had his lap time deleted for track limits, which made it a more challenging day. The positive of a Sprint weekend is that there are still plenty of sessions ahead, giving us valuable opportunities to learn and prepare for Qualifying and the race, where the bigger points are on offer."

“It’s very close,” Max says after sprint qualifying. “And the lap itself, you push as hard as you think is possible, close to the wall in some places. It felt like the car was coming alive on the soft tyres. I didn’t expect this, so I’m definitely very to be starting first.”

Max continues: “We’ve been a lot stronger over the last few races, but this track highlights a few weaknesses of the car. We managed to drive with them as well as possible.”

When asked about the heat in the car, Max says: “It’s like being in a sauna while you’re exercising. So, yeah, it’s always very hot. You try to cool yourself down as well as you can between the runs, but the whole cockpit is hot, just like your entire body. But in a way, we love it as well.”

This weekend will be Max’s 250th Formula 1 Grand Prix. Oracle Red Bull Racing celebrated the four-time World Champion’s milestone on Thursday by presenting him with a special cake.