Karun Chandhok: ‘I was too quick to write off Lando. Now he looks like an F1 champion’

The Formula 1 circus has climbed aboard BA 1246 from São Paulo heading back to London Heathrow. Everyone around me is looking forward to
the last weekend off before the gruelling triple header that will first take everyone west to Las Vegas and then a long way across to the Middle East for the season climax in Qatar and Abu Dhabi.

There’s a real sense of ‘what could have been’ in the Red Bull camp who are across the aisle from me on the plane, while I feel relief from Team Lando who have come away from a tough weekend with a faultless pair of races and 33 points, and Mercedes sitting a couple of rows ahead feel satisfied and vindicated that their rookie delivered his most accomplished weekend of the year. We truly are a travelling circus!

“This was the first time that Max had been knocked out in Q1 on pure pace”

The two biggest talking points from the weekend were of course the intra McLaren battle with Oscar Piastri dropping more points and Max Verstappen having another roller-coaster weekend in Brazil. This was the first time in his F1 career that the Dutchman had ever been knocked out in Q1 on pure pace. It was undoubtedly the biggest shock of qualifying, coming just two races after he utterly dominated in Austin.

A lot of fans at home were wondering just how this has happened and the answer seems to be that the current F1 cars have quite a small window in which to hit the sweet spot on the tyres for qualifying. If the car set-up is slightly out and you don’t get the tyres working properly, you just have no grip.

The Interlagos circuit is a bit bumpy with a lot of kerbs that can damage the plank underneath the car and this forces the teams to all raise the car up, compromising their aero performance. Dialling a set-up in with this compromise and then dealing with the imperfection is really tricky for the drivers – over at Ferrari, for example, Charles Leclerc managed to qualify in the top three while Lewis Hamilton was down in 13th underlining the challenge.

Predictably, Red Bull made the sensible call to change the car set-up as well as the power unit overnight ahead of the race. At this altitude – the track is at 2500ft above sea level (the second-highest on the F1 schedule) – and with the long run uphill from Junção to the Senna S, the fresh engine will undoubtedly have helped but that would have been useless without an improved car balance. Every team will tell you that without the parc fermé regulations, there are several things they would change on the car between qualifying and the race and it was important for Red Bull as a team to understand just what went wrong on that disastrous Saturday.

Max’s drive in the São Paolo Grand Prix was outstanding. An early puncture meant that he had to pit earlier than he would have liked in the first stint and that had a knock-on effect of pitting for a third time later in the race. Pitting under the virtual safety car meant he lost 10sec which happens to be the gap between him and Lando Norris at the end of the race. There’s no doubt that Lando was managing his pace and had more in hand, but if Verstappen had started further up the grid, we would have witnessed a great battle.

Up in the commentary box, I watched Max’s onboard video in that final stint quite closely and it was a joy to watch the Dutchman at work. His ability to rotate
the rear of the car under braking to get the nose into the apex without overstressing the rear tyres is just incredible – very much like Michael Schumacher in the early 2000s. The ballet dancer-like balancing act going on between his hands and feet as he hits every single apex on every single lap leaves you in awe.

As for Lando, I am happy to put my hands up and admit that I underestimated his ability to bounce back this season. After declaring the Brit as my pre-season title favourite, we saw several qualifying errors and a clumsy crash into Piastri in the Canadian GP at which point I publicly said that I thought the Aussie was now the favourite for the title. The race in Budapest before the summer break was a key point for Lando. He held Oscar off brilliantly to take the win and since the break, he has been superb. After the engine failure in Zandvoort he was 34 points behind but has outscored Oscar by 58 points in the last six weekends. We have seen a more serious and focused Lando since Holland and crucially the errors that we saw in the first half of the season have gone away. I’m sorry I doubted you Lando – now with a 24-point lead, it’s yours to bring home!