Max Verstappen believes his chances of retaining his world championship are remote after falling 49 points off the lead with three rounds remaining.
The Red Bull driver, who is seeking a fifth consecutive title, could drop out of contention at this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix.
Verstappen said he will approach the event like any other. “It doesn’t really change,” he said. “I mean it’s a lot of points, so I’m not really thinking about it too much because there’s also not much that I can do.
“We need a lot of luck now ’til the end to even have an opportunity. So personally I don’t think about that.”
Verstappen slashed his deficit to the championship lead for five consecutive rounds prior to the last event in Brazil. But even if he wins all the remaining races this year, Lando Norris needs only fourth places to beat him, and the pair are also separated by Norris’s team mate Oscar Piastri.
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Despite still being in range of the points lead with three rounds to go, Verstappen says he hasn’t been a genuine contender for much of the year.
“It’s been good, for sure. I think every season you want to try and be better, which is not always easy, but you try to be more consistent and try to really optimise everything that you can with the car. I think most of the time we really did that, so I’m pleased with that.
“But it’s not where I wanted it to be for most of the season, right, otherwise you’re fighting really for the title and we haven’t, really. So I definitely enjoyed the highs and the wins that we did score. But at the same time, of course, the lows were also not fantastic.
“At the same time in the middle of the season, or even after the summer break, we were looking at a gap of more than 100 points and it really looked like it was only going to get bigger. And at one point we were really overturning that by quite a bit. Potentially also a bit of luck in some places. But I think that’s something that we can be proud of, to still score some good results at the end of the season.”
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