Max Verstappen insists he has “nothing to lose” as he looks to launch an extraordinary comeback and win his fifth consecutive F1 world championship.
The Dutchman has won back-to-back races, in Monza and Baku, to narrow the gap to championship leader Oscar Piastri to 69 points with seven rounds remaining and 199 points still to play for.
At this stage last year, Verstappen was protecting a 59-point lead over McLaren’s Lando Norris – currently positioned in second, 25 points off Piastri – before sealing his fourth world title with two races remaining.
Speaking ahead of this weekend’s Singapore Grand Prix – the only race on the calendar that he has not won – Verstappen was keeping his feet on the ground despite the huge strides in performance Red Bull have made in recent weeks.
“I have nothing to lose, really,” Verstappen said. “And as a team, we approach it like that, too. Sixty-nine points is still a lot, especially when you look at how the season has gone so far, and McLaren have been incredibly dominant. That doesn’t suddenly change.
“But I am not too stressed about anything. I am enjoying what I am doing in F1 and outside of F1 and trying to do the best I can every time I jump into the car.
“Some tracks will be better, some worse, and this could be one of those. But if we win it, great, and if we don’t we don’t. Life goes on.
“If we can win a few more races that would be nice, and if that means we still didn’t win the world championship then so be it.”
Norris, meanwhile, admitted that Verstappen is now “genuinely” a contender following a sensational September for the Dutchman.
“If you go back to the beginning of the season, they [Red Bull] were challenging us for the first six or seven races for wins, then we [McLaren] brought some upgrades and improved a little bit,” Norris said.
“But then they brought a couple of upgrades and that has put them on the same level. We are still expecting to dominate and we come to these races with the goal and ambition of winning and wanting to dominate and continue the form we have shown all season.
“But in Baku, we had the car to win and we didn’t. We had the chance to fight Max. At the round before in Monza, they were too quick for us. And if there are some races coming up where he is too fast, which is very possible, because I expect them to be quick for many of the races this season…
“We will go to Las Vegas and other low-downforce tracks where we don’t expect to be as great as we have been – so that is an opportunity for Red Bull – but we are just focusing on ourselves and maximising our performances.”
