Max Verstappen breezed into Mexico City on Thursday looking like a man who’s exactly where he wants to be: hunting rather than being hunted, with a title fight still alive and the pressure – his words – feeling “positive.”
The talk of the paddock wasn’t Verstappen’s arrival, though. It was McLaren’s latest reset. After their sprint clash in Austin, Oscar Piastri revealed the team has returned both cars to a “clean slate,” shelving any whiff of preferential treatment as the run-in begins. Plenty in the drivers’ room have suggested that, with the risk of losing the championship entirely now very real, the easier play is to back one horse. McLaren aren’t biting.
Is that good news for Verstappen? So far, yes. He trails Piastri by 40 points, and a two-car McLaren dynamic – especially on days when they’re not perfectly aligned – doesn’t hurt his cause. Verstappen, though, batted away any invitation to wade into Woking’s politics.
“That’s their call,” he shrugged. “I’ve got my own job to do. If my car’s quick enough, I’ll beat them. That’s the only thing I care about.”
It’s the first time since 2021 that he’s had a genuine threat to the big trophy as the season closes, and the roles have flipped. Back then he led the charge. This time he’s chasing. Asked whether it changes how he feels about the fight, he barely blinked.
“Honestly, not really,” he said. “Winning late, winning early – I’ve done both. This season’s been harder for us for a long stretch, so to still be in it is a bit of a surprise. But we are, and from here we need to be perfect.”
Perfect is a tall order at altitude, where the margins typically tighten and small missteps turn into big ones. Verstappen sounded unfazed. He called the mood in the garage calm, the execution under pressure “what we do,” and the target simple: win what’s winnable, keep the run going, let the math take care of itself.
Could he sweep the rest of the calendar? He laughed that one off. “You can’t predict that,” he said, before offering the pragmatic floor to his ceiling. “Worst case, I finish P3. But the aim is to go for wins every weekend. If it all comes together, great – that would be an unbelievable comeback. If not, we’ll still be able to look back at a huge swing in performance at the end of the year. We’ll deal with the final verdict in Abu Dhabi.”
The McLaren subplot will remain a drumbeat through the weekend. Piastri’s reset is designed to cool the temperature inside the team after Austin, but it won’t quiet the debate. When you’ve got two fast cars and one championship lead, the cleanest strategy is rarely the easiest to sell. It’s helped Verstappen so far, but he’s not counting on his rivals doing him any favors.
He’s counting on his own camp to keep the execution sharp. And that’s the tone that carried as he settled into Mexico: no grand predictions, no fire at McLaren, just a driver who likes the chase, sees a path, and knows there’s no room left for stumbles. Positive pressure. His kind of weekend.
