Max Verstappen will be in the Milton Keynes factory this week to discuss the RB21’s “weaknesses”, Helmut Marko admitting Red Bull are “worried” after back-to-back McLaren victories.
1,029 days after taking the lead in the Drivers’ Championship as he sought to defend his 2021 World title, Verstappen is no longer leading the standings.
Red Bull admit they are ‘worried’ about McLaren’s pace
He lost P1 to Lando Norris at the season-opening Australian Grand Prix where the McLaren driver won a chaotic wet race in what should’ve been a McLaren 1-2 were it not for Oscar Piastri’s slide into the grass.
A week later, McLaren did secure the widely predicted 1-2, but it was Piastri who took the maximum points ahead of Norris at the Chinese Grand Prix. Verstappen was off the podium in fourth place.
Norris continues to lead the Drivers’ Championship by eight points ahead of Verstappen, but, and it has only been two race weekends, pre-season predictions of McLaren tripping themselves up with their two-driver team are looking clearer.
F1 2025: The important numbers
👉 The updated Drivers’ and Constructors’ Championship standings
👉 The results of the F1 2025 championship
Red Bull though, need a performance breakthrough with their RB21 to stay in the fight.
Although this year’s RB21 is, Red Bull attest, a step in the right direction, the team is struggling to find the sweet spot with the car.
Verstappen, lining up fourth on the grid, joked ahead of the Chinese Grand Prix that he could win, but only “if they all retire in front of me”.
“We are not fast enough,” he said. “Just very difficult to get a, let’s say, consistent balance out of it, every lap, every corner, basically.”
Asked if the car’s understeer balance has been fixed for 2025, he added: “That could be better too.”
The car’s weaknesses in comparison to McLaren’s MCL39 have Marko admitting Red Bull are worried with Verstappen heading to the team’s headquarters this week to work with the engineers on finding a way forward.
“Max is in the factory this week, and we’ll discuss [with] the engineers where from his side the weaknesses are,” the Red Bull motorsport advisor told Motorsport.com.
“Then we have to try to cure it or to improve the car as soon as possible. It’s changing with different circuits and with different compounds, but McLaren is good at every circuit and [with] every compound.
“We are worried, but it is not like we are throwing in the towel.”
Although Verstappen is second in the Drivers’ standings, eight points behind Norris, Red Bull are third in the teams’ challenge with 42 points between themselves and McLaren after just two race weekends.
Like Marko, team principal Christian Horner also won’t give up – especially when he can count Verstappen amongst his team’s strengths.
“You can’t be that defeatist,” he told Sky Sports. “We’re eight points behind in the drivers’ championship after two races, and there’s everything to play for.
“And if nothing else, last year teaches you that you can start as strong as you like, it’s how you finish.
“We’ve got great strength in depth in our team. Everybody in the company knows we’ve got a bit of pace to find and we’ve got the tools, we’ve got the people in order to do that. It’s just unpicking it. I think we’ve got some very good data out of out of today.
“Max is working harder than I’ve ever seen him. He’s more integrated into the engineering group than I’ve ever seen. We’ve got a reasonable basis. We were 0.176s off pole, and we were as quick in the second stint as a McLaren.
“There’s a roadmap of development that is planned now and obviously we’re trying to make sure that that develops what we need in terms of lap time to really put a lot of pressure on the McLarens.
“But they’re not that far ahead. Never say no.”
That Red Bull are also trying to decide between sticking with Liam Lawson or putting Yuki Tsunoda in the car as early as the next race in Japan also isn’t helping.
Read next: Tsunoda issues response after Zak Brown’s Red Bull promotion comments
