F1 – Formula One champions Red Bull hope to pick up the pace over the last six rounds of the season after Max Verstappen emerged stronger than expected from back-to-back street races in Azerbaijan and Singapore, team boss Christian Horner said.
The triple world champion, who will be 27 next week, had his advantage over McLaren’s Lando Norris cut from 62 points after the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on Sept. 1 to a current 52.
The season now has a four-week lull before a US-Mexico-Brazil sequence starting in Austin, Texas, on October 20, followed by another final triple-header of Las Vegas-Qatar-Abu Dhabi.
“I think we’ve got a vein of development and I think we’ve understood some of the issues with the car. I think we’re starting to address them,” Horner told reporters after Verstappen finished a distant second to Norris in Singapore.
“We were better in Baku, we were better here.”
Verstappen finished fifth in Baku after sixth at Monza, a result that equalled Monaco in May as his worst of the season so far but could have been far worse.
The Dutch driver won all six of the remaining races last year, the most dominant season the sport has seen, and Horner felt the team were on the right path despite McLaren taking a 41-point lead in the constructors’ standings.
“I think the encouraging thing was the car reacted as we hoped it would and what our tools were telling us,” he said of Singapore.
“I think the team are starting to get a direction and an understanding of where some of the limitations are and some of the causes of limitations. That opens up development paths and veins that hopefully will be productive.
“I think what Monza really exposed was perhaps some of the root cause, or helped to identify the root cause of the issue. So I’m taking Monza as the low point and we’re starting to build out of that.”
While McLaren believe the drivers’ championship is on, the mathematical reality is that Norris still has a mountain to climb.
One retirement could blow the battle wide open, or kill it off, but the Briton will have to increase his scoring rate on current form.
With three sprint races adding to the available tally, there are a maximum 180 points still to be won.
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