Verstappen reveals motive for Perez pit stop priority radio message 

The triple world champion was heard informing race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase that Perez could pit before him at the second round of stops at the Yas Marina season finale. 

Asked what the reason behind the radio message was, Verstappen explained: "It was to try and lead for 1,000 laps in the season. 

"I knew that that was on the cards. So I said to GP… he was also of course aware of that, so just to make sure that they wouldn't pit me too early. 

“The tyres still felt OK. They were not fantastic but they felt OK at that point so we just kept on extending a little bit.” 

Verstappen admitted that his record-breaking 2023 campaign will be difficult to repeat in the future. 

“It was a bit emotional on the in-lap,” he said. “It was the last time I was sitting in the car, which has of course given me a lot.

“Of course very proud to win also here, the last race. But I have to say a big thank you to everyone at Red Bull. It’s just been an incredible year. It will be hard to do something similar again, but we definitely enjoyed this year.”

The Dutchman added: “It will be very hard to have another season like this – we know that. Of course you always want to do better, but sometimes doing better is not only race wins and potentially winning the championship. But we’ll see.

“We are working hard for next year to have again a very competitive car. For sure all the other teams out there, they want to try and beat us next year and are ready for the battle. But in the meantime we are going to enjoy a little bit this year as well.”