Max Verstappen says Red Bull’s title hopes were hurt by its form prior to the summer break as he enters the final triple header of the season facing a 49-point deficit.
Lando Norris has a commanding lead over Verstappen in the standings heading to this weekend’s Las Vegas Grand Prix, while Oscar Piastri is 25 points ahead of the defending champion with three rounds to go. Verstappen was 104 points adrift of Piastri following the Dutch Grand Prix but a run of three wins and a second place across four races brought him back into the frame, before finishing third to Norris in each of the last two rounds to slip back again.
“Very different tracks, so it’s difficult to know [if the car will be competitive again] to be honest,” Verstappen said. “I think we’re still struggling a b it on tires, so it will depend on track layout, temperatures. We can get it into a good window, but not always. That’s what we have to focus on. That’s what we will focus on in the coming races.
“What are we – 49 points behind now? So it’s also… I mean, we didn’t lose the championship [in Brazil] or whatever. We lost the championship from race one ’til Zandvoort. We had a lot of weekends where we simply were not quick enough. Then, of course, you have a big gap.
“Then we had good moments where you get some points back, but not enough. That’s how the season goes.”
Verstappen will not even entertain talk of the championship heading to Las Vegas now he’s nearly two race wins behind Norris, but hopes to challenge for wins if Red Bull can learn from its impressive turnaround on race day in Brazil.
“Let’s not use that word [championship] at the moment, because it’s too many points to really have a proper chance at that. If you look at the whole season, we gave away too many points from the beginning to the middle of the season.
“For us now, to the end, it’s trying to have these highlights, have good race weekends and see what we can do to the end. A lot of things that I guess we also still want to analyze from the whole weekend, but at least the race [at Interlagos] was very promising.”
