DOHA - Max Verstappen boosted his late bid for a fifth successive drivers' world championship on Sunday when he took full advantage of a McLaren strategic blunder to complete a sensational hat-trick of victories at the Qatar Grand Prix.
The Red Bull driver made an immediate pit-stop during an early safety car intervention, when McLaren duo Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris stayed out, and he capitalised by driving with cool precision to triumph in convincing style.
His win lifted him into second place in the title race with 396 points, 12 behind series leader Norris who finished fourth on a disappointing evening for him and the Woking-based team who were stunned by the outcome.
Pole-sitter Piastri slipped to third, but trimmed his deficit to Norris to 18 points with one race remaining in Abu Dhabi next Sunday where Verstappen has won four times in the last five years.
"It’s all possible," said Verstappen.
The Dutch ace came home 7.995 seconds ahead of Piastri with Carlos Sainz third for Williams, 14.670 seconds adrift, ahead of Norris and the Mercedes pair Kiimi Antonelli and George Russell.
It was Verstappen’s seventh win of the season, his third in succession in Qatar and the 70th of his career.
"That was an incredible race for us," said Verstappen, who had written off his title hopes at the end of August before embarking on a sequence of results that turned a 104-point deficit to Piastri into a four-point advantage.
"We made the right call as a team to box under the safety car and it was scrappy, but we got there in the end."
Red Bull's race strategist Hannah Schmitz joined Verstappen on the podium to mark her part in his success.