Helmut Marko predicts Max Verstappen as champion
Red Bull does not currently have the best car on the grid, but Max Verstappen will still be able to win his fifth consecutive F1 Drivers’ title. Challenging superstition and omens, Helmut Marko, the Milton Keynes team’s advisor, is confident in his protégé. After stating that McLaren might have an advantage of between five-tenths and a full second per lap in race pace, the 81-year-old former Austrian driver remains convinced that Verstappen will not have to abdicate his Formula 1 world champion throne.
“Max Verstappen,” Helmut Marko said in a long interview with ServusTV, the German-language television network owned by Red Bull, “will still be world champion in 2025. To win, Max doesn’t necessarily need the fastest car, though, of course, he would like to have it. At this point, he is used to fighting and can recover a lot (in terms of lap time), but not half a second.”
The work on the Red Bull RB21
“The goal of the 2025 car,” he added, “was to expand the operating window of the car to give the drivers more confidence. And I believe we have succeeded, though not yet perfectly. McLaren was a second per lap faster in the long runs, and if they can replicate that in Australia, which is a very different circuit, then they will finish 1-2. But we will see what happens in Melbourne.”
Max Verstappen and the Aston Martin temptation
Regardless of the results of the early GPs, Helmut Marko does not believe Max Verstappen will leave the team in the short term, potentially accepting Aston Martin’s advances, where he would reunite with the genius Adrian Newey. “Adrian is a true fighter and a very intelligent person. The first thing he wants for his car is the fastest driver of all. Max was tempted, but in the end, all he wants is to win. Everyone in Formula 1 knows that Newey is a genius, but they also know that success doesn’t come overnight. He will need to build a strong team, and so I don’t see Max Verstappen leaving Red Bull anytime soon.”
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