‘I didn’t expect that!’ – Verstappen hails ‘incredible’ P3 in Sao Paulo after starting from pit lane

Max Verstappen was left to hail his “incredible” podium result at the Sao Paulo Grand Prix, the Dutchman having climbed through the field from a pit lane start to secure third place at Interlagos.

Having made gains at the start, Verstappen dropped back down the order again after being forced to make an early pit stop due to picking up a puncture. From there, however, he embarked on an impressive recovery drive that saw him challenge Mercedes’ Kimi Antonelli for P2 in the closing stages.

While he ultimately could not pass the Italian, Verstappen was still delighted to claim P3, an outcome that he conceded was not something he had expected a few hours earlier.

“I think the race was quite full on – a lot of action,” the four-time World Champion summarised afterwards. “I had to overtake some cars, of course, coming from the pit lane. I think our pace was quite strong over all the stints.

“Sometimes it’s difficult to know fully with traffic and stuff, but to be on the podium from the pit lane… I didn’t expect that at all, even with a puncture as well at the beginning of the race. That’s why we had to box again.

“It’s an incredible result for us so I’m very happy with that, and just very proud of everyone within the team as well. Yesterday was very tough for us, but we never give up. We always try to improve and try to find more lap time, and luckily we found that again today.”

A late pit stop for a set of fresh soft tyres helped Verstappen to go on the chase. When asked how he decided on the amount of risk to take following that stop, the Red Bull driver explained: “I was just trying to pass as fast as possible, because you don’t want to lose too much time.

“Some cars were also in a DRS train so it’s not always straightforward. With all that, to finish only 10 seconds from the lead, I think for us is incredible.”

Reflecting further on this later as he spoke to the media, Verstappen said of his team’s approach: “We are all in this together and we never give up. We take risks, yes, but I like that, to always try and be better because we don’t want to settle for second.”

While the result has taken Red Bull up to third place in the Teams’ Championship – given Ferrari’s double retirement from the race – Verstappen still added further to his own tally in the Drivers’ standings, with his total now at 341 points.

Despite this, the 28-year-old – who is 49 points adrift of championship leader Lando Norris and 25 away from Oscar Piastri in second – is downplaying the prospect of fighting for the title.

“It’s too many points to really have a proper chance at that, I think,” said Verstappen. “If you look of course at the whole season, we gave away too many points from the beginning until the middle of the season.

“I think for us now to the end is trying to just have these highlights, have good race weekends and see what we can do to the end. But yeah, a lot of things that I guess we also still want to analyse from the whole weekend, but at least the race was very promising."