Verstappen in the Rain: A Coming of Age at Interlagos

The 2016 Brazilian Grand Prix was run in the kind of wet conditions that sorts drivers into those who can cope and those who cannot. The Interlagos circuit, always fast and demanding, becomes something else entirely in rain: the long main straight aquaplanes, the slow corners offer no drainage, and the gaps between what is possible and what is catastrophic compress sharply. In those conditions, on the afternoon of November 13, 2016, Max Verstappen gave notice of what the sport was about to experience for the next decade.

Verstappen, 19 years old and in his first season with Red Bull after an extraordinary debut year with Toro Rosso, was not fighting for the championship. He was in the midfield, working his way through the race with the patient aggression that had already distinguished his approach from that of his contemporaries. But in the wet, he was something different entirely. Where others braked early, he braked late. Where others took cautious lines around rivers of standing water, he found traction that apparently wasn't there. The gap in car control between him and the drivers around him was visible and embarrassing for those on the receiving end.

His overtakes — multiple passes in the rain, on the outside, at corners where the inside line was faster and safer — were discussed for weeks afterwards. The commentators ran out of superlatives. Former drivers spoke of seeing something that reminded them of Senna in the wet. The comparisons were earned.

At the front, Lewis Hamilton drove to victory, reducing Nico Rosberg's championship lead ahead of the Abu Dhabi finale. Rosberg finished second, consolidating his position. The mathematics of the title were unchanged. But the conversation in the paddock and among fans was not about Hamilton and Rosberg — it was about a teenager from the Netherlands who had just demonstrated, beyond any reasonable doubt, that he was going to be one of the fastest drivers Formula 1 had ever seen.

Lewis Hamilton won the Brazilian Grand Prix for Mercedes, his tenth victory of the season. Nico Rosberg finished second, maintaining a points advantage going into the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Max Verstappen finished third for Red Bull — a result that barely conveys what he had produced in the wet conditions during the race.

Rosberg secured the 2016 World Championship at Abu Dhabi the following week, finishing second behind Hamilton. Five days after the title was confirmed, Rosberg announced his immediate retirement from Formula 1. Hamilton's Brazilian victory became part of the story of a title lost despite a dominant season — he won nine races to Rosberg's eight but lost the championship by five points.

The 2016 championship contest between Hamilton and Rosberg was the culmination of three years of intense teammate rivalry. Rosberg, who had grown up alongside Hamilton in karting, had spent his early Mercedes years as the supporting character in Hamilton's narrative. In 2016, he reversed that relationship — consistent, fast and increasingly composed under pressure. His decision to retire immediately after winning the title, having achieved the goal he had worked his entire life toward, was one of the most unexpected announcements in the sport's modern history.

Verstappen's 2016 season — which had included a remarkable debut win at Barcelona in only his first race for Red Bull — ended at Interlagos with a performance that set expectations for what was coming. He won the championship three times in the following three years. The Brazilian drive in the rain in 2016 was the first time the broader public fully understood what was coming.

November 13, 2016 was five days after Donald Trump's election as the 45th President of the United States — one of the most unexpected political results in modern democratic history. The global conversation was consumed entirely by its implications. Formula 1's paddock at Interlagos contained people from dozens of countries with dozens of perspectives on what had just happened; the race itself was a temporary shared focus in a week when shared focus was difficult to find.

Brazil itself was in political turmoil. President Dilma Rousseff had been impeached and removed from office in August 2016. Her successor Michel Temer was governing under accusations of corruption that would eventually reach him too. The extraordinary optimism of the early 2010s — the World Cup, the Olympics, the economic growth — had collapsed into recession and scandal. The Interlagos crowd, arriving in the rain on a November Sunday, was living through a very different Brazil from the one that had hosted the Olympics just three months earlier in Rio de Janeiro.

Heavy rain throughout the grand prix, with periods of extreme downpour and significant standing water on the circuit. Multiple safety car periods were required. The conditions were among the worst seen at a Brazilian Grand Prix in recent memory, with sections of the circuit — particularly the long straight — resembling rivers at certain points during the afternoon. Track temperatures were low and grip levels variable, punishing any lapse in concentration while rewarding those with the car control and confidence to find the available grip.