Max Verstappen’s sudden return to domination over the recent ‘triple-header’ of races has alarmed Red Bull’s rivals.
The four-times world champion took maximum points in Singapore, winning the sprint race and grand prix from pole position. It came a week after he won the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia.The Red Bull driver came close to sweeping all of the last three races. He was in contention for pole position in Azerbaijan but had to abort his final run due to a yellow flag. Even so he rose from eighth on the grid to finish a close second to George Russell, aided by a Safety Car period.
Russell is concerned by how competitive Red Bull were across three very different tracks in as many weekends. “The goal right now is to try and improve the car because we were very much the dominant team for this whole season and if you look at the recent races, Red Bull have been very much the best,” he said.
“In Baku, Max was at a similar level to me. We go to Malaysia, it’s a totally different track, you go to Singapore, totally different track again, and he’s dominated the last two weekends.”
Red Bull’s ascendancy comes as Mercedes introduced an upgrade for their W17 with mixed results. “Right now as a team the goal is to try and get on top of these updates,” said Russell.
“We very much were the dominant team for so long,” he added, “now since the break we’ve seen Red Bull be exceptionally fast on many different types of circuits and we need to try to go back to winning ways.”
Verstappen’s latest win leaves Red Bull just seven points behind McLaren in the fight for third place in the championship. Lando Norris is also concerned by the progress Red Bull have made.
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“When you look at the pace of the Red Bull today, it was pretty incredible,” he said. “So they perform well on all types of tracks.
“Malaysia was an outlier for us, in terms of the pace, [which] was pretty poor. Baku was poor as well, honestly. In Malaysia, we knew we were bad because of the Tarmac, but Red Bull were good there. The Tarmac suits our car much more here, but Red Bull are still the quickest here.
“So Red Bull seem like the team to beat and have clearly improved the car a lot over the last few weeks, and we’ve just slipped to the back of the top four, so we’re the fourth-fastest team.
“Which means, though, if we finished P4 today we still did a good job and overachieved in terms of car result. But I’m not happy with the P4, I want a podium and we want to fight for wins, so we need to keep trying to improve and bringing upgrades and making the car better.”
Charles Leclerc qualified alongside Verstappen on the front row but was not able to keep up with him during the race. “I think we maximised everything we had and for that I’m proud,” he said. “But it’s also true that it’s a bit of a shame to miss out on the victory.
“I think Red Bull and Max were just too quick. We tried everything and I think with our different strategy it was quite a good call. But unfortunately we just missed out on the win.
“I think first, in qualifying, we need to do some progress. We were quite close to Max, actually, yesterday, which is a good sign, but we still need some upgrades in order to be in front in qualifying. And if we do, then we’ve got a good race car.”
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