'Viva Las Vegas' for Verstappen: 'Looking forward to coming back here!'

For a while it looked like Charles Leclerc would win the Formula 1 race at the Las Vegas Street Circuit. Then it looked like Sergio Perez would run away with the win, despite a difficult start. Yet in the end, it was Verstappen who made a strong comeback and took the win in a blood-curdling final stage.

'Viva Las Vegas' for Verstappen after hard-fought F1 victory

"This was a tough one," said Verstappen after an action-packed Las Vegas GP. "It was a tough one. I tried to go for it at the start. We (himself and Leclerc) both braked quite late and I just ran out of grip, so we ended up a bit wide. The stewards gave me a penalty for that and it put us on the backfoot."

"I had to pass quite a few cars and there was the Safety Car, so at that point there was a lot going on," he continued. Once in the lead, the throttle could go full blast in the closing stages of the race.

A hard-fought victory for Verstappen, who also suffered damage in a collision with Russell after his time penalty for the starting incident with Charles Leclerc. The consequences were not dramatic, but were noticeable. "The structure was fine but it's never ideal. There was always a bit more understeer in the car but luckily we could still win the race," said Verstappen.

Whereas Verstappen has been quite critical of the F1 race at the Las Vegas Street Circuit on several occasions, he has since revised his opinion. "The DRS around here was very powerful. Even when you would take the lead, if the guy behind stays in the DRS, he would still have the opportunity to come back to you, so it created a lot of good racing today. Definitely a lot of fun," said the race winner. "Great crowd. I hope everyone enjoyed it. We definitely did, so already excited to come back here next year and hopefully try to do something similar," the Dutchman concluded.