{"id":279961,"date":"2025-07-21T12:45:11","date_gmt":"2025-07-21T12:45:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/279961\/"},"modified":"2025-07-21T12:45:11","modified_gmt":"2025-07-21T12:45:11","slug":"verstappen-accepts-red-bull-will-probably-not-catch-mclaren-this-year-%c2%b7-racefans","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/279961\/","title":{"rendered":"Verstappen accepts Red Bull will “probably not” catch McLaren this year \u00b7 RaceFans"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Verstappen<\/a> doubts Red Bull will quickly reverse the advantage McLaren have built up over the last 12 months.<\/p>\n

Red Bull enjoyed unprecedented domination of F1 just two seasons ago, when they won 23 out of 24 races. Verstappen began last year strongly but has won just four grands prix in the last 12 months.<\/p>\n

His chances of retaining the championship he won for the fourth time last year are fading. He ended the first half of the season 69 points adrift of leader Oscar Piastri<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Speaking before Red Bull\u2019s shock firing of team principal Christian Horner<\/a>, Verstappen said he doubted Red Bull will be able to match McLaren\u2019s performance any time soon.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf everyone knew what they had to do, then everyone would be winning races \u2013 or at least everyone would have a chance of winning,\u201d Verstappen said in response to a question from RaceFans. \u201cIn F1, unfortunately, that is not the case. It\u2019s a very complicated sport.\u201d<\/p>\n

Verstappen has taken four pole positions so far this season but McLaren\u2019s superior race pace means he has only won twice.<\/p>\n

\u201cOf course, we are not where we want to be,\u201d he said. \u201cBut we are still fighting for podiums. It could also be way worse \u2013 driving last. It\u2019s a work in progress.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe are trying to find more performance in the car. Of course last year we were a bit hurt with our balance issues that we had with the car, so we also had to first understand what was going on there. For sure that has also probably hurt a little bit the future development of the car, this year.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut we\u2019re still trying everything we can to be as competitive as we can be. Now, is that going to be McLaren-level? Maybe not. Probably not. That\u2019s how F1 goes.<\/p>\n

\u201cSometimes you have dominant years, good years where you can win a lot, sometimes maybe not, or not at all.\u201d<\/p>\n

While many teams are increasingly prioritising their work on the new regulations for the 2026 F1 season<\/a>, Verstappen indicated Red Bull will continue bringing improvements for this year\u2019s car.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe will improve a bit and other teams also will improve,\u201d he said. \u201cBut it\u2019s not going to suddenly be easy to match the performance of the McLaren.\u201d<\/p>\n

The team began to lose its way last year as Verstappen and former team mate Sergio Perez<\/a> found their car increasingly difficult to drive. Verstappen said its handling has improved since then.<\/p>\n

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\u201cThe balance issues this year have been a bit better,\u201d he said. \u201cBut I think in some areas of corners we are just a little bit weak. In low-speed corners we\u2019re not that good. And I think particularly in the medium-speed that\u2019s where McLaren is really strong compared to others. We seem to not be able to match them.\u201d<\/p>\n

The possibility Verstappen might cut his long-term Red Bull contract short to join another team has been the subject of intense speculation for months. But he said it\u2019s hard to predict how competitive any team might be under the new power unit and aerodynamic regulations planned for next year.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen you look at the previous regulations, I think no one would have expected McLaren to suddenly do that,\u201d he said. \u201cSometimes it takes a bit of time to get everything together.<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it was the opposite for us. We had everything really well from the start of the new regulations and then towards the end it was a bit of a struggle for us. That is something that we have to figure out, why we didn\u2019t make the same kind of progression as maybe some other teams.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut then again, \u201926 is completely different and something completely different that you need from the car. Because the previous generation of cars, we had the opposite. We were off in the beginning and then towards the end we actually made it work.<\/p>\n

\u201cSo sometimes it\u2019s also a bit difficult to explain everything: why or how things are so good or so average.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Formula 1
\nBrowse all Formula 1 articles<\/a><\/strong> <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen doubts Red Bull will quickly reverse the advantage McLaren have built up over the last 12…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":279962,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[5070,4199,707,4200,9824,1073,79,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-279961","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-charles-leclerc","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-george-russell","13":"tag-max-verstappen","14":"tag-sports","15":"tag-uk","16":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114891294281739241","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279961","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=279961"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/279961\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/279962"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=279961"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=279961"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=279961"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}