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Congratulations from Hamilton to Verstappen: "A well-deserved achievement"
- Toby McLuskie
That Max Verstappen secured his third Formula 1 world title in Saturday night's sprint race did not escape the Mercedes team either. Congratulations from Lewis Hamilton, George Russell and Andrew Shovlin are therefore not to be missed in a review of the F1 Sprint in Qatar.
Hamilton congratulates Verstappen
Hamilton praised Verstappen's performance and called his third world title 'well deserved.' "Congratulations to Max on his third world championship, he has driven a great season and it is a well-deserved achievement," said the Mercedes driver, who starts the Qatar Grand Prix just behind Verstappen. "It would be great if we could be in a fight with him tomorrow," he added.
Russell fully concurs with his teammate's words. "Max winning the world championship is fully deserved. It's an incredible achievement so congratulations to him. We need to raise our game to give him more of a challenge next year," said the 25-year-old Briton.
Trackside engineering director Andrew Shovlin also praised Verstappen and Red Bull Racing's performance. "Congratulations must also go to Max Verstappen. He has been superb this year and his title is fully deserved. We are all working as hard as possible to make his life much tougher next year," Shovlin concluded.
Mercedes goes for retake in GP Qatar
The sprint race at the Losail International Circuit did not go quite as hoped for Mercedes. Russell started strongly, but saw his soft Pirelli tyres fail towards the end of the race. For his part, Hamilton had to limit the damage from a twelfth starting position. The drivers finished in P4 and P5 respectively.
"I was surprised by how quickly the Soft tyre dropped off and we were fortunate that there were a number of safety car interventions," admitted Russell. "Without that, we may have finished outside the points." He does stress that Mercedes' pace looked better than that of Ferrari, the German team's closest rival. "We were on the same tyres as them and we were faster. We are in a great place tomorrow to fight against the McLarens too."
Hamilton is also keeping a close eye on the McLarens of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris, although they will start on P6 and P10 because their times were removed in qualifying. "Tomorrow we start third. That is obviously a much better place to be lining up than we were today. We should be looking to fight to hold that position. We know it will be difficult to hold the McLarens behind. They are a little further back though, so we will be doing our best to do that. We will be giving it everything we've got as always," Hamilton concluded.