Autobayng News Team
Despite out-scoring the two championship-leading McLaren drivers over the last three grand prix weekends, Max Verstappen does not believe he is closing fast enough to seriously threaten them for the title.
The reigning world champion was over 100 points adrift of championship leader Oscar Piastri after the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort, but has out-scored Piastri and his McLaren team mate Lando Norris at Monza, Baku and Singapore to pull to 63 behind Piastri in the standings.
Over the final six rounds of the season – including three sprint rounds – Verstappen must out-score Norris and Piastri by an average of 6.8 and 10.6 points per round, respectively, if he is to retain his world championship crown. However, despite finishing second, first, first and second over the last four grands prix, Verstappen does not feel he is on pace to catch the McLaren drivers before the end of the season.
“For that you need to win, you need to dominate,” he said. “We’re not doing that, or at least we’re not doing it [in Singapore].
“We are not catching up enough. For that, you had to win and we didn’t. That’s how it is. We already lost way too many points in the beginning of the season, that’s quite clear. But we’ll just try to see it race-by-race, we tried to do the best we can. Singapore is still not our favourite, I think, also for the car. But nevertheless second I think is still a great result.”
Verstappen beat both McLaren drivers in Singapore but was unable to challenge pole winner George Russell for the win throughout the race. The Red Bull driver was heard complaining to race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase about inconsistencies with his car downshifting over the course of the race.
“I think the problem that we had was that, in general, nothing really went smooth because I had a lot of issues with the shifts – so downshifting, upshifting,” he explained. “It was just really unpredictable. It made it really difficult to go into the corners.
“Then the balance of the car was also worse than I expected it to be, so also there I had to manage. And it basically was very difficult to just be consistent. I have it quite often, but this one was very bad, I have no idea what happened there.”
Despite McLaren losing out in Marina Bay to both Mercedes and Red Bull, Verstappen suspects that McLaren’s results masked superior race pace.
“I think the pace, who I think was the strongest was, again, McLaren,” said Verstappen. “Because on the hard tyre, the gap pretty much stayed the same with Mercedes, just the first stint I was on the softs, everyone else was on the mediums, so I just had to manage my pace throughout the whole thing.
“But that’s the problem when you start on the inside, there’s no grip there. We measured quite a big difference left to right, so I had to start on softs to at least not lose a position. But that also compromises your first stint, possibly a little bit also the second actually. But that’s how it is. I mean, [in qualifying] I really tried to do everything I could. I felt good in the car. The laps were good, but Mercedes and George were flying as well, and they did a very good job all weekend.”
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