McLaren F1 trio – Lando Norris, Oscar Piastri and Andrea Stella – are not surprised with Max Verstappen and Red Bull’s performance and count them as F1 title contender.
An off race for McLaren in F1 Azerbaijan GP and a double win for Verstappen in Monza and Baku, has allowed the Dutchman to trim the gap to Piastri to 69 points in the drivers’ standings. An update from Red Bull has simplified the balance, which has helped the reigning champion to master.
He is still far off considering the number of races left and McLaren’s raw pace, but any trouble for the Woking-based team, it will allow Verstappen to close in further, especially if the likes of Mercedes and Ferrari falter too. This is not a surprise for McLaren trio Norris, Piastri and Stella.
Norris now has to defend his place from Verstappen, while also catch Piastri. The Brit is doing as much as he can but the first attempt to gain points in Baku, it didn’t work out the best. He trimmed the gap to 25, but it is not often that he will get a grand prix where the Australian has had a DNF.
Piastri is seemingly not too concerned in larger context considering the gap. His thought is more about finishing at the top which will anyhow solidify his position. The Australian – personally – will be fine if Verstappen is finishing behind him but ahead of Norris.
Norris: “It’s not often that they’re slow, so I think people need to stop being so surprised that they’re quick. Max was winning races already at the beginning of the year. He could have won round one. I think he was pretty close to winning round two in the sprint or something. The whole season, they’ve been quick. The Red Bulls have been good. They brought some upgrades to Monza, which seems to have helped them improve even more. So not a surprise. I think we know that they’re an incredibly strong team and one of the best drivers ever in Formula 1. So we expect nothing less. They’re going to make our life difficult, I think, for the rest of the season.
“We also from our side, we struggled a bit in Baku, clearly we are not quick enough, we made improvements but thing where the Red Bull has been so dominating in the past, they still have and we don’t and when I was following the Red Bull, there was clearly some areas where they were just not the level to us and we just need to understand why. I’m doing the best I can in every race. If you look at that, every race I finished second or worse this year was an opportunity lost. I don’t really care how people look at it. Of course, I needed to do better in the race and also qualifying in Baku, but we went out first. This was just our decision and we paid the price for that. I could have done that.
“I also could have ended up in the wall and gone long and something worse happened. I felt like I was close to maximising in the race. It didn’t maybe look like it from the outside but we struggled with the pace. We weren’t too optimistic about our pace in Baku. Clearly, we struggled a little bit. I don’t think the pace is bad, it’s just too difficult to overtake. I’m doing the best I can. I know I’ve still got a lot of points to make up against a pretty good driver [Piastri], an incredible driver. I just need to keep my head down.”
Piastri: “I don’t know. I’m not going to rule him out, but I’m honestly not too concerned with that. I’m just trying to bounce back from this weekend and put in the best performances that I can. And I know that if I get back to where I know I can be, then I’ll be more than okay. So that’s what I’m going to focus on. Yes and no. It can go both ways for you.
“If Max is in the middle of us [Piastri and Lando Norris] and I’m ahead, then it’s good for me. If it’s the opposite way around, then it’s bad for me. So there are positives and negatives to that. But, ultimately, I want to make sure that my performances are at the level that they should be, and then I’ll let the rest play out.”
Stella: “I used the capital letters already, when I said yes in capital letters, and after Baku, I think it just confirms. We’re talking about Max Verstappen. We’re talking about Red Bull. We have already seen in Monza that they improved. They seemed to have made an improvement with their car, because the way they won Monza was something more, for what was our assessment, than simply a car that adapts well at low drag. They were fast in the corners, medium speed and low speed corners, fast in the straights. And we know that Max, when he has a competitive car, can deliver strong weekends. Conversely, we also knew that here in Baku for us would have been a difficult circuit.
“So we will see now in Singapore, which should be more of a one in which we should perform well. Hopefully, we can go back to fighting for victories, and then we will see how the rest of the championship will unfold. But definitely, Max is in the contention for the Drivers’ Championship. We knew it, and we got confirmation. When you race in Formula 1, when you race at the top of Formula 1, and the competition is so tight, simply, you cannot afford errors in any case, because there will be your contenders that are ready to take advantage. And this before might have been Mercedes, like in Canada. Max, like at the start of the season. We don’t have to forget that Red Bull won the two races at the start of the season.
“And then, if anything, it’s they kind of slipped back in terms of performance, and now they seem like they found their way back, okay, but they were in contention for victories already at the start of the season. For us, considering, especially the Drivers’ Championship, certainly the margins to error reduce furthermore. But this is always the ethos when you’re racing in Formula 1. So hopefully some of the inaccuracies and issues have accumulated in this weekend, because in this weekend, we have to remember that not only we didn’t have a fast enough car, but we also had some reliability issues that cost Oscar some time during practice. Therefore, quite a lot to take away for the drivers, but also for the team.”
Toto Wolff: “69 points. Well, that’s a long shot. Things need to work in his favour. But you can see a DNF for the championship leader and Max scoring 25 points. So, that can swing quickly.”
Here’s Lando Norris on Azerbaijan GP low score
Here’s Oscar Piastri on DNF in Azerbaijan GP
