Max Verstappen and Red Bull experienced a debacle at the Austria Grand Prix. Now the Dutch Formula 1 pilot caught the new title win.
The Swiss “Tages-Anzeiger” summed it up: “A bang, and the beautiful party in Orange is finally over”wrote the newspaper after the Grand Prix of Austria in Spielberg.
The Dutchman Max Verstappen, which has become Formula 1 world champion in the past four years, is meant. Even he has apparently written off the new title. “We don’t fight for the World Cup anyway”he said resigned after the race.
Already 61 points behind
A crash, which was indicated by Mercedes pilot Kimi Antonelli shortly after the start, brought Red Bull Pilot Verstappen very early in Styria.
Meanwhile, that raced McLaren-Duo Lando Norris and Oscar Piatri in front of the many Verstappen fans in Spielberg once again in places one and two.
In the driver’s ranking, Verstappen already has 61 points behind the World Cup leader Piatri after eleven out of 24 races.
Marko and Horner also resigned
“This is a very black day, the deficit is almost unobelactable”Motorsport consultant Helmut Marko also said after the disaster at the Red Bull home game about the dwindling World Cup opportunities: “If something extraordinary does not happen, we have to assume that the World Cup is gone.”
Team boss Christian Horner described the Grand Prix as “A home race to forget”. He estimates the World Cup position similar to Marko. “The distance is considerable”he admitted: “It looks between two candidates after a competition.”
And these are called Oscar Piatri and Lando Norris. “Solo for McLaren, debacle for Red Bull. The fight for the World Cup becomes a two-man show”also wrote the “Kurier” newspaper from Austria.
McLaren is currently a class of their own
McLaren is currently a class of its own and has constructed a car that protects the tires like no other team. Red Bull just can’t get along. And so the prospects of Verstappen on the fifth title are very cloudy. The “Kleine Zeitung” from Austria probably writes that McLaren has in Spielberg “In a separate dimension” moved.
“My mentality does not change. We have often won in the past”said Verstappen with a little distance to his end: “Sometimes you have to accept that you don’t win. We just try to do our best.” That doesn’t sound like a lot of confidence either.