Verstappen expresses doubts about clinching his fourth title, blaming the RB20’s subpar performance.
Max Verstappen stated that winning the 2024 Formula 1 World Championship is “not in his hands” due to the current competitiveness of Red Bull, despite his substantial lead in the standings.
Verstappen heads into the remaining nine races with a 70-point lead over Lando Norris, his closest rival in the drivers’ championship.
However, McLaren’s overwhelming dominance at Zandvoort a week ago, with Norris securing a victory 22 seconds ahead of Verstappen, has sounded the alarm at Red Bull.
Since then, Red Bull has acknowledged that McLaren has become the benchmark, with Verstappen lamenting that the RB20 has become more challenging to drive following developments.
The Dutchman, who hasn’t won in five races, conceded that Red Bull’s current difficulties mean he doesn’t have the car to guarantee a fourth consecutive F1 title.
“Listen, I’m just doing my best. Whether I win it or not, it’s not going to change my life. Would I like to win this 4th title? Yes, of course. But it’s no longer in my hands with the car’s current performance.”
“Because I’m just trying to do my best. Trying to give feedback, trying to make things faster.”
“I don’t know if it will be enough until the end of the year. But I know we’re going to give it our all as a team. Trying to be more competitive than what we’ve shown, of course, at Zandvoort. Because that was, I think, a very bad weekend for us. And we’ll start from there.”
But while he didn’t expect things to unfold this way after his explosive start to the season, Verstappen insists he relishes the battle.
“I enjoy it, yes. Would I like to win more races? Yes, of course. But I also knew that repeating 2023 would be very unrealistic. But did I expect it to be like this? Not really. With, of course, the way we ended 2023 and how we started 2024.”
“So now it’s up to us to try to improve our F1. I know everyone is working hard to do that.”
With a 70-point lead, shouldn’t he just focus on managing the less successful weekends?
“No, because even that has been very difficult to do as we can’t do much with the car.”
“Yes, of course, I would like to win the championship. We still have a good lead. But we can’t just say, ‘Oh no, we can’t touch the car because we might lose more points or something.’ We have to go all out. We want to have the best package possible every weekend.”
“But in situations like the start, taking the risk, looking for the gap, then… yes, you have to be careful. At Zandvoort, it was quite straightforward, I went straight ahead and took the lead. Then when Lando passed me, yes, it was an easy overtake. And then there’s no point in defending against something like that and risk a collision.”
“But adopting too lax an attitude would be dangerous with more than 250 points still available. We can’t just calculate like that. I want to win races. There are still nine races and a few Sprint races. But I also know that we need to finish the season perfectly, take points from Lando when possible, lose as few as possible otherwise. And that’s very hard to do.”
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Max Verstappen Doubts Title With RB20 Woes Max Verstappen Doubts Title With RB20 Woes
