Max just seemed to sit back for most of the race, right in that 4-5 second window where the dirty air of the car in front probably didn’t hurt much. Charles on the other hand tried to overtake George for quite a few laps and also stuck close to Lewis before that which probably destroyed his tires more, giving Max a favorable tire delta towards the end of the race.

Plus some setup changes between the sprint and qualifying and the hard tire seemingly working better in general on most cars.