He knew that Qin Miao would make a move on him sooner or later, so Verstappen on the track wasn't in a rush to overtake Magelsen in front of him. Instead, he intentionally controlled the distance between himself and Magelsen in the corners, so that he could catch Magelsen's slipstream on the straights to fend off Qin Miao, who was ridiculously fast.
However, as the third lap ended and the DRS was activated, Verstappen found it hard to keep up with Magelsen.
It's not that Magelsen was too fast, but rather too slow.
After all, the Haas car wasn't a Williams; it couldn't compare to teams like Red Bull and Mercedes that had a clear aerodynamic advantage in terms of straight-line speed.
With DRS activated, Verstappen's Red Bull had a top speed 35 kilometers per hour faster than the Haas.
Even if Verstappen was 0.9 seconds behind Magelsen entering the DRS zone, the extremely long DRS zone on the Interlagos track allowed Verstappen to complete the overtake on Magelsen.
