{"id":102320,"date":"2025-08-28T14:24:17","date_gmt":"2025-08-28T14:24:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102320\/"},"modified":"2025-08-28T14:24:17","modified_gmt":"2025-08-28T14:24:17","slug":"max-verstappen-says-he-has-no-ambitions-for-the-2026-title","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/102320\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen says he has no ambitions for the 2026 title"},"content":{"rendered":"

Max Verstappen has said he has no ambition for this year’s Championship title.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The four-time champion was asked during a press conference ahead of the Dutch Grand Prix<\/a> whether he still had any ambition for this years title, to which he replied; “No, not really.”<\/p>\n

It’s not been the ideal season for Verstappen, with just two wins in Japan and Emilia Romagna.<\/p>\n

Unlike his dominance in the last four years, the Dutch driver is currently third in the championship standings<\/a> – 97 points behind leader Oscar Piastri.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Verstappen has spoken about struggles with the car this year, but hopes this weekend can bring a better performance.\u00a0<\/p>\n

“[Hungary] was not a great weekend for us, so I hope we can be closer. I don’t think this will be our best rack, but there is some weather coming in<\/a> so that could cause some chaos.”<\/p>\n

\ud83d\udcf2\u00a0Follow The Sporting News on WhatsApp<\/a><\/p>\n

Why has Verstappen’s performance dropped off?<\/p>\n

After such an impressive dominance from Verstappen, it’s unusual to see his performance drop away.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Two wins this year is a stark contrast to his 2023 season, where he won all but three of the 22 races on the calendar.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The blame for the 2025 season isn’t down to the driver, but could be better placed on the behind-the-scenes at Red Bull.\u00a0<\/p>\n

It’s been a whirlwind year, from Christian Horner’s<\/a> sexual misconduct allegations to his recent firing as boss of the team.<\/p>\n

And with super-engineer Adrian Newey and other senior members departing the team, there is definitely unrest.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The consequences of those issues could be pouring into the performance of the car, impacting Verstappen’s fight for his fifth title.\u00a0<\/p>\n

But the Red Bull driver seems to have some hope in the team for the remainder of the season and aims to do better at his home Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

“Try to make the best of it, every single race weekend. Try and learn about the car, I’m curious to try and understand the current car a bit more and see where we can gain performance.”<\/p>\n

Formula 1 news & related links<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen has said he has no ambition for this year’s Championship title.\u00a0 The four-time champion was asked…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":102321,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,85],"class_list":["post-102320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=102320"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/102320\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/102321"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=102320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=102320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=102320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}