{"id":507221,"date":"2025-10-17T16:26:14","date_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:26:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/507221\/"},"modified":"2025-10-17T16:26:14","modified_gmt":"2025-10-17T16:26:14","slug":"we-should-have-won-singapore","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/507221\/","title":{"rendered":"\u201cWe should have won Singapore\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Verstappen<\/a> believes that \u2013 barring any drama at McLaren<\/a> \u2013 he needed to win the Singapore Grand Prix to have any serious shot at the 2025 F1 title. According to the Dutchman, that victory was within reach for Red Bull.\u00a0<\/p>\n

With six race weekends remaining, Verstappen trails championship leader Oscar Piastri<\/a> by 63 points. McLaren team boss Andrea Stella said in Baku that all media should write in capital letters that Verstappen is still a \u201cserious threat\u201d for the F1 title, but the Red Bull driver himself isn\u2019t going that far.\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Singapore, he jokingly said the chances of him winning it are 50%, something he repeated in Texas: \u201cYou either win or you don\u2019t. It\u2019s fifty-fifty \u2013 that’s how simple it is.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

During his Dutch media round in the Austin paddock, Verstappen shed some more light on his title chances. In his view, he should have won the Singapore Grand Prix to make the fight with both McLaren drivers truly exciting.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Asked whether it gives him hope that the McLaren pairing keeps taking points off each other, the reigning world champion replied: \u201cBut then we really should have won in Singapore. Now we\u2019re just not catching enough points.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Verstappen bases himself on simple maths \u2013 he needs to gain more than ten points per race weekend, but in Singapore he only closed six points on Piastri. It\u2019s worth noting that he did finish ahead of both McLarens on a track that, on paper, didn\u2019t suit the RB21 at all.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was definitely a positive, yes. But in the end, we just didn\u2019t make up enough points.\u201d Even when Motorsport.com asked directly whether he truly believes he needed the Singapore win for a fifth world title, Verstappen replied: \u201cYes, that would have helped, 100%.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Max <\/p>\n

Max Verstappen finished second in Singapore<\/p>\n

Photo by: Zak Mauger \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Could Verstappen and Red Bull have won in Singapore?\u00a0<\/p>\n

In Verstappen\u2019s opinion, the win was within reach for Red Bull in Singapore. McLaren wasn\u2019t as dominant as expected, meaning opportunities were there. After the race under the floodlights, Verstappen immediately admitted that Red Bull hadn\u2019t maximised its weekend \u2013 a view he still stands by. It partly came down to a setup change made before qualifying that didn\u2019t have the intended effect.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think, based on how we started the race weekend, it would have been better like that,\u201d he said. \u201cBut those choices were made as a team. Looking back, we were just a bit too conservative, I think.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

The start didn\u2019t help either, although Verstappen said there wasn\u2019t much he could have done about it. Red Bull opted for soft tyres and a so-called \u2018low grip\u2019 setting for the start, as rain had fallen just before the grid procedure. By lights out, however, the track had dried \u2013 raising questions about the wisdom of Red Bull’s decision. But according to Verstappen, there wasn\u2019t a better option available:\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, otherwise I would have had too much wheel spin. There was 8% less grip on the inside line, so I basically lost a car length straight away. That was the problem, and that\u2019s why we started on softs and chose that low-grip setting off the line.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Can Red Bull challenge McLaren again in Austin?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Austin presents a completely different challenge. After its recent form in Monza, Baku, and Singapore, Red Bull does seem to have made a step forward overall \u2013 though Verstappen stressed there are still \u201cno guarantees\u201d that the team will be competitive everywhere. The Circuit of the Americas features many medium-speed corners \u2013 the very type in which \u201cMcLaren killed Red Bull in Zandvoort\u201d, to quote team boss Laurent Mekies.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cIn Singapore, it was obviously better than\u00a0that, but our medium-speed performance was still not good enough compared to McLaren,\u201d Verstappen said. \u201cWe still need to make improvements, and hopefully we can do that here.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Read Also:<\/p>\n

The positive is that Red Bull now understands its car better than before, which also helps with this weekend’s sprint format. \u201cI think we generally know what to do with the car. It\u2019s more about how we extract the maximum from a race weekend. That\u2019s the key for us now, as we need everything to take points away from McLaren.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Those final words underline that Verstappen has his eyes on McLaren \u2013 a notable shift given that earlier this year he called a title fight completely unrealistic. \u201cWe\u2019re at least going to try. If you already say, \u2018Forget about it,\u2019 then I might as well not race. And there\u2019s no other goal to fight for, right? The gap behind me is more than fifty points, so we\u2019ll at least try and give it a proper go.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen believes that \u2013 barring any drama at McLaren \u2013 he needed to win the Singapore Grand…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":507222,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[163541,4199,707,4200,1073,1710,749,79,16,15,163611,166060],"class_list":{"0":"post-507221","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-circuit-of-the-americas","9":"tag-f1","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-max-verstappen","13":"tag-mclaren","14":"tag-red-bull-racing","15":"tag-sports","16":"tag-uk","17":"tag-united-kingdom","18":"tag-united-states-gp","19":"tag-what-max-verstappen-really-thinks-of-hisu00a0f1-title-chances-u201cwe-should-have-won-singaporeu201d"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115390447116864274","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507221","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=507221"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/507221\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/507222"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=507221"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=507221"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=507221"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}