Max Verstappen has not ruled out challenging for the championship after dominating the Azerbaijan Grand Prix on a weekend both McLaren drivers struggled.
Verstappen won back-to-back races for the first time in over a year to close his deficit to championship leader Oscar Pisatri to 69 points after the Australian crashed out on the opening lap in Baku.
Lando Norris was unable to fully capitalise on his team-mate’s accident and is 25 points behind Piastri with seven rounds remaining.
“Seven races to go and it’s still 69 points, it’s a lot,” Verstappen told Sky Sports F1.
“Basically, everything needs to go perfect from my side and then a bit of luck from their side I need as well. So it’s still very tough.”
He later added in the press conference: “I don’t rely on hope, so I personally don’t think about it. I just go race by race, what I have been doing basically the whole season – just trying to do the best we can, try to score the most points that we can. Then after Abu Dhabi, we’ll know.”
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Red Bull’s Max Verstappen was pleased after securing successive victories in Azerbaijan, although refused to get carried away with title hopes
Since the summer break, Verstappen has scored the most points of any driver after finishing second in Zandvoort then taking consecutive wins in Monza and Baku.
It is a stark contrast to the previous races where Verstappen failed to finish on the podium in four successive races for the first time since 2018.
Red Bull introduced floor upgrades in Monza which appear to have made a significant difference to their performance and Verstappen says his car is “doing pretty much what I wanted it to do”.
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Verstappen discusses his Italian Grand Prix win in Monza
“The last two race weekends have been amazing. It’s just a lot of combination of a lot of things that are going better in the last few weeks,” he said.
“We understood a bit more about the car. Of course, it’s two low-downforce tracks, so we have to wait to see how we are going to perform again on a high-downforce track. But, for now, we are just very happy with what we are doing and will now find out in the upcoming races how that will go on other kinds of layouts.”
Mekies: Verstappen masterclass in qualifying set up win
Red Bull were off the pace on Friday in Baku but, not for the first time this year, they turned things around overnight and Verstappen delivered in tricky qualifying conditions where six drivers crashed, including Piastri.
The Dutchman showed his quality with a stunning lap under big pressure in Q3 to start on pole, which set him up to dominate the race by leading every lap and taking the fastest lap to record the sixth Grand Slam of his career.
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Watch the moment Verstappen took a shock pole at the Azerbaijan GP
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies told Sky Sports F1: “What to say [about Verstappen]? Such a masterclass in qualifying, a huge gap in super difficult conditions with the wind blowing at 60kph.
“Today it was difficult to estimate what would be the race pace, nobody really did some long runs on Friday, and he just pulled away lap after lap.
“We knew after Monza that Monza is so specific that it was not so clear how much of the progress we could bring on a track like here, so it’s a good feedback for everyone that has been pushing so hard in Milton Keynes to get the car faster.
“We know Baku is also very specific with only slow-speed corners but certainly it’s two tracks in a row where we at least had the pace to fight.”
The 2025 Formula 1 title fight continues under the lights at the Singapore Grand Prix on October 3-5, live on Sky Sports F1. Stream Sky Sports with NOW – no contract, cancel anytime
