Patrese warns McLaren: “Verstappen is alive in the championship and could force team orders”. Riccardo Patrese believes Max Verstappen is still in the 2025 F1 title race.

According to Patrese, McLaren could soon be forced into using team orders

With back-to-back victories in Monza and Baku, Max Verstappen has not fully reopened the championship battle, but with seven races still to go — including three Sprint weekends — he has sent a clear signal that will not go unnoticed at McLaren. Oscar Piastri currently leads the World Championship with a 25-point advantage over Lando Norris, while Max Verstappen has closed the gap to -69 from the Australian. This makes the upcoming Singapore Grand Prix a decisive weekend in determining whether the title fight will remain an internal McLaren affair or if the reigning world champion still has a realistic chance of defending his crown.

Riccardo Patrese believes Verstappen is still very much in the hunt for the 2025 Formula 1 World Championship: “What we discovered in the last two races, since he also won at Monza, is that Max Verstappen is not dead yet,” the former driver explained to CoinPoker. “He has given McLaren, Piastri and Norris a lot to think about. I have never seen a weekend with so many mistakes as in Baku. After Piastri’s errors, I thought Norris could push a little further — maybe not to win, but at least to get on the podium. Yet for some reason he didn’t perform well enough. He lost the chance to close the gap to Piastri. Piastri still holds an important advantage in the standings because of the points he has, but from my own experience, until the championship is mathematically finished you should never say, ‘Okay, I’ve won’. He needs to focus not only on the battle with Norris but also on the threat from Verstappen.”

Patrese also warned that Verstappen’s resurgence could push McLaren into a strategic corner: “This is the problem that Andrea Stella has to face. If Max Verstappen continues like this over the next two races, maybe even winning one of them, then McLaren will have to say: ‘Now we need team orders’. McLaren cannot afford Norris and Piastri to fight each other and throw away points. From the way Verstappen talks, it shows he knows the car has improved and that there might be small upgrades coming. So he has the chance to apply pressure and maybe even win the championship.”