Verstappen 2nd in Sprint to take his third World Title

It’s a fantastic feeling, to be three time World Champion is incredible. It's brilliant for the Team, my family and my friends too. From day one my family have contributed so much of their lives to make me the person I am today. Luckily, I got to FaceTime my mum after the race, she was already on the champagne! It’s beautiful because my mum understands, she is a racer too. My dad and was here at the track also so it’s nice to have them close. We talk about performance of the car but I think that the most important thing is the atmosphere and the people working in the Team. We've had a lot of great results in tough conditions, but we did an incredible job. It’s been a fantastic year and the Team have been working tirelessly throughout the whole year. It’s been so enjoyable to be part of this group of people. For now, I’m just enjoying the moment and hopefully we can keep this momentum going for a while, you know we’ll keep on pushing and trying to do the best we can. 

Firstly, very well done to Max, he has done a tremendous job and he worked really hard for this, together with all the Team, I am very happy for them. The way Max has driven this year has to be one of the best Championship seasons in the history of the sport, he has driven at a different level. He has been outstanding, and he deserves all the success and credit he gets. It was a shame for me today, I was in the wrong place, at the wrong time and there was nothing I could really do unfortunately, I ended up taking a lot of damage to my car. It was a frustrating afternoon because I believe we had the pace to go all the way to good points. I need to recover for tomorrow, do as best as possible and come back strong. 

Today wasn’t the easiest day, but that seems to be the case on Sprint Saturdays. I apologise to the team for the track limit violation and my radio communication in SQ1. We didn’t maximise the performance during the Sprint Shootout, so I’m pretty frustrated. As for the Sprint race, the first lap was difficult, especially with the wind, but we focused on collecting data, taking care of the car, and bringing it home. We learned a lot of things for tomorrow, and we’re starting close to the points, so we’ll refocus and try to extract the most out of the car. Track limits seem difficult, and tyre management will be tricky, but we have a couple of things in our back pocket, so hopefully, we can maximise on that and score points tomorrow. 

Today, the speed in SQ1 was there, but unfortunately, I made a mistake during my last lap, took too much kerb, and my lap time got deleted. My apologies to the team, because they did a really good job and worked hard overnight to make a big step forward from yesterday. On lap 1 of the Sprint race, the biggest thing was the sand offline. I had a bad start on the dirty side of the track, but then I went into Turn 1 on the racing line, had a strong corner, and made up a few places. In Turn 2, I went offline and lost the rear very quickly. I’m massively sorry to the team, because with everything that happened in the race, we maybe could’ve scored some points today, but my mistake cost us. The car seems okay, and going into tomorrow, I’ll learn from what happened today. The tyre degradation was quite high so it will be a tough, long race, but I’ll look at the data tonight and apply it tomorrow.