Max Verstappen has cast doubt on his chances of fighting back in the Formula 1 championship standings, admitting that Red Bull is struggling to display the level of dominance required to reclaim the title. With just six races remaining, the Dutchman believes the challenge to overtake the McLaren duo of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris will be extremely difficult.
Over the last three Grands Prix of the season — from Monza to Singapore — Verstappen managed to climb back onto the top step of the podium twice, with victories in Italy and Azerbaijan. These results helped him cut the points gap to championship leader Oscar Piastri, who failed to finish in the top three in Singapore. His McLaren teammate Lando Norris took third place that weekend, behind Verstappen, while George Russell claimed victory under the Marina Bay lights.
Thanks to those results, the four-time world champion reduced the deficit to Piastri to 63 points, a significant improvement from the more than 100-point gap he faced after the Dutch Grand Prix. As the championship now heads to the United States Grand Prix in Austin, six rounds remain on the calendar, including three Sprint events. Theoretically, that still gives Verstappen an opportunity to recover enough points to challenge the McLaren drivers and possibly take the lead in the standings to secure another world title. However, the first person who doesn’t seem to fully believe in that scenario is Max Verstappen himself.
To defend his world championship crown, Red Bull would need a “recipe” that, according to Max Verstappen, they currently don’t possess — the ability to win and dominate consistently. “You have to win, you have to dominate, and we’re not doing that — or at least we didn’t do it in Singapore,” Max Verstappen explained. “We’re not recovering enough. We needed to win, and we didn’t. That’s the reality. We already lost too many points at the start of the season, and that’s quite clear, but we’ll try to take it race by race. We tried to do our best. Singapore still isn’t one of our favorite tracks, I think, even for the car, but I believe that finishing second was still a very good result.”
That second place was indeed a positive outcome for Verstappen, especially considering the mechanical issues he faced during the race. Gearbox problems once again disrupted his rhythm, an issue that has occurred multiple times this season. “Overall, it wasn’t a smooth race because I had a lot of problems with the gear shifts — both downshifts and upshifts,” Verstappen revealed. “It was really unpredictable and made it very difficult to enter the corners properly. The car balance was also worse than I expected, so I had to adapt as best I could, and it was basically very hard to stay consistent. It happens to me quite often, but this time it was really bad — I have no idea what happened.”
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