Max Verstappen: “The fate of the championship is no longer in my hands”
The Dutchman has just completed a sixth race without victory after the Italian Grand Prix, a first since 2020. A long drought that he cannot truly understand, as he believes that the performances of Red Bull will not allow him to win the title on his own and that he will have to rely on poor results from McLaren.
Max Verstappen’s title is not yet secured and is increasingly being contested. After seven victories in the first ten races, the year 2024 seemed to be another year of domination for Red Bull and their Dutch driver Max Verstappen, who, after the Austrian Grand Prix where his main rival Lando Norris had to retire, had an 81-point lead. Red Bull was also comfortably leading with a 64-point advantage over Ferrari, suggesting the acquisition of both trophies at the end of the season for the Austrian team. However, since that time, nothing has gone as planned within the Milton Keynes team.
Important departures and a lack of correlation
Outside the track, the numerous departures have undoubtedly affected the team’s morale, especially those of Adrian Newey at the beginning of May — the ingenious designer headed to Silverstone and the Aston Martin team — and more recently of Jonathan Wheatley, who has joined the Audi project. Christian Horner admitted that Red Bull’s recent performances stems from a flawed correlation, with data from the wind tunnel and CFD (computational fluid dynamics) that do not match the car’s actual behavior on the track, making it difficult to have a good understanding of the car with problems arising that the Austrian team is unable to explain. At the same time, the upgrades implemented do not help improve the drivers’ feedback, who have repeatedly complained about the lack of balance in the car.
This forced the team to go back to optimize and improve the behavior of the single-seater. This has contributed to delaying new developments since the team had to first solve these problems. A delay in development that has been fatal to Red Bull for several races now, the team moving further away from the front of the race as evidenced by their last Grand Prix in Italy where both drivers finished only in fifth and seventh place, far behind the Ferraris and McLarens. Results that are increasingly worrying their triple world champion. Speaking at Monza, Max Verstappen was fatalistic, stating that the performance of his RB20 will not allow him to win the title if McLaren continues on this path.
Verstappen aware that he could lose the title this season
« Listen, I’m doing my best. Whether I win or not, it’s not going to change my life. Would I like to win? Yes, of course. But it’s not in my hands with the car’s performance, because I’m just trying to do my best, give feedback, and try to make it faster.
» The Dutchman therefore hopes for mistakes from his opponents in order to maintain his lead in the championship, a lead that decreases as the Grand Prix races go by. Verstappen now only has a 62-point lead over the British driver from the Woking team. Even though he has admitted to enjoying the competitiveness of Formula 1 this season, he did not expect such a sudden turn of events, forcing the team to react quickly.
« Do I wish I could earn more? Yes, of course. But I also knew that a season like the one we had last year is very unrealistic. However, did I expect it to happen like this? Not really, especially with how we ended and started the season. So now, it’s up to us to try to improve the situation. But I know that everyone is working hard to make the car better. I know that we will give our all as a team to try to be more competitive than what we have shown so far and we will move forward from there.
The need to maximize results for Dutch.
With a car increasingly struggling, Verstappen knows that the last eight races of the season are going to be intense and that, to accumulate the maximum points, every weekend will have to be perfect at Red Bull, especially in terms of settings, to have the most competitive car possible. « I would like to win races, otherwise, you know, there are still eight races and sprint races. These things can easily be turned around. But I also know that you have to have a perfect end of the season, and I think it’s very difficult »,” added the former Toro Rosso driver.
« I’m just trying to do my best and try to find the best possible setup for the car. It’s very difficult to achieve this because we are a bit limited in what we can do with the car. We still have a good lead. But you can’t approach a weekend by saying: ‘Oh no, we can’t touch the car, otherwise we could lose more points.’ You go for it. You want to have the best possible package every weekend.
» With eight rounds remaining, the end of the season is shaping up to be exciting, with three teams battling for the constructors’ title and two men in the running to win the drivers’ title. Red Bull will have to find solutions or risk seeing both trophies slip away at the end of the season.
