With Max Verstappen claiming a superb Formula 1 Azerbaijan Grand Prix victory, Motorsport Week asks: Will McLaren now feel the title race is back open?
McLaren entered the Azerbaijan Grand Prix weekend needing just nine points more than Ferrari to claim the Formula 1 Constructors’ Championship for the second successive year. But it leaves with a papaya tale between its legs as Max Verstappen claimed back-to-back victories for the first time this year.
The papaya squad will undoubtedly claim their collective crown again, but with Oscar Piastri producing an uncharacteristic misdemeanour in the shape of a first lap accident, and Lando Norris throwing away an opportunity to eat into his team-mate’s lead, Verstappen narrowed his gap to Norris to 44 points, and 69 to Piastri.
And guess what? There’s still seven races to go.
Verstappen was typically straight-shooting and glass-half-empty [a common 2025 trait of his] about his chances of catching up, but stopped just short of ruling it out.
“I mean, I don’t rely on hope,” he told media including Motorsport Monday. “But it’s seven rounds left – 69 points is a lot. 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. And then after Abu Dhabi, we’ll know.”
Verstappen is, in the nicest possible way, a total racing robot: switched-on, scarcely with scruple or any fault, and seemingly immune to pressure, but with the pressure totally off this year amid McLaren’s advantage, perhaps it’s times like these when he can dial in his brilliance that little bit extra.
Has second successive Verstappen win proved Red Bull streak is no fluke?
Those in the papaya corner have constantly reiterated their reluctance to rule Verstappen out, even when the MCL39 appeared to be no less than a locomotive powering its way around most circuits like an orange blur. But after proving that the commanding showing in Monza was no fluke, it appears that Verstappen’s Red Bull RB21, at times a cumbersome and petulant younger sibling of its predecessors, is maturing and shedding its foibles.
Under the guidance of Laurent Mekies, the Milton Keynes-based squad has turned a corner which only someone of an engineering bent like him has been able to oversee.
The Frenchman’s approach to leading from the front has been publicly praised by Verstappen and Helmut Marko, indicating that Christian Horner’s presence is not missed at all.
In Baku, even Yuki Tsunoda, who has struggled to wrestle the car under his control unlike Verstappen, scored his best result for the team, and with the Dutchman making every use of its improvements, there must surely be a sense of unease among those in Woking.
A pole position and victory for Verstappen wouldn’t have necessarily caused too much alarm for McLaren. After all, his Monza triumph [in which he broke records for the fastest-ever lap and Grand Prix of all time] was somewhat overshadowed by the debate of the driver switch McLaren imposed on Piastri. And despite the circuit and conditions not being conducive to the MCL39, it appeared nothing was clicking.
Norris put it in the wall in practice on Friday, and Piastri admitted there was work to be done. And in qualifying, where there were more red flags than five minutes of swiping on a dating app, Piastri and Norris seemed to lose their nerve.
The papaya wave is not as high as before
The Australian, often the only driver seemingly close to Verstappen in terms of nerveless performances, stacked his car into the wall early in Q3, and when action resumed, Norris skidded across a barrier, costing him time and leaving him an undesirable seventh on the grid.
And at lights out, Piastri was already moving. Jumping the start, his car’s anti-stall kicked in, sending it into a stutter, leaving him floundering towards the very back of the field. And five corners later, his car was in a familiar position – in the wall. Watching the action trackside on a phone, Piastri faced a nervous wait to see if Norris could narrow the gap.
But alas, a similar problem that plagued Norris in the pits in Monza cost him again, except this time, team orders couldn’t save him. Left to trail a frantic battle between Liam Lawson and Tsunoda – in what felt like, if rumours are true, an audition for one Racing Bulls seat next year – the Brit could only take seventh place, losing a chunk of points of Verstappen and gaining no more than a pinch on Piastri’s lead.
After the race, it was perhaps the lowest mood McLaren’s drivers have been in. Piastri admitted sole responsibility for his error, and Norris insisted he did the best he could. All the while, Verstappen sat back with 67th winners’ trophy, looking as if he’d barely broken into a sweat.
F1 motors on to Singapore next, a track that McLaren dominated on last year, and has traditionally not been kind to Red Bull, even when the team has had no competition to speak of. The bright lights of the tricky Marina Bay circuit will be the supreme test of Red Bull’s newfound resolve and improvement, and if it scores an A+, it will feel that the Drivers’ title is very much game on.
READ MORE – How Christian Horner is free to return to F1 soon as Red Bull exit details revealed
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