{"id":253277,"date":"2025-10-31T13:34:19","date_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:34:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/253277\/"},"modified":"2025-10-31T13:34:19","modified_gmt":"2025-10-31T13:34:19","slug":"papaya-rules-are-for-max","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/253277\/","title":{"rendered":"Papaya rules are for Max"},"content":{"rendered":"

Guenther Steiner has made a U-turn on Max Verstappen’s title chances, telling\u00a0The Red Flags Podcast that the Red Bull star is still very much in the running for the 2025 drivers’ championship. Joking, he added that McLaren<\/a> could help him do so, too.<\/p>\n

\u201cI was completely no a few races ago, I\u2019m saying yes,\u201d Steiner said when asked if the Dutchman is still in with a chance of the title. \u201cAnd his best ally to win this championship is McLaren.\u201d He then added with a grin: \u201cThe papaya rules are for Max.\u201d<\/p>\n

This set off a round of jokes about Verstappen’s orange branding and McLaren’s papaya, with the hosts of the podcast teasing that the reigning champion’s ‘orange army’ is from the Woking team.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Pressed on Oscar Piastri’s recent downturn in performance after a chaotic Mexico Grand Prix weekend, the former Haas team principal didn’t sugar-coat his opinion of the Australian driver and how the team has, according to him, failed to support him.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI mean it wasn\u2019t good enough to be world champion, no? He\u2019s struggling now and I don\u2019t know what exactly is happening but one of the things I could conclude out of it is that, Oscar being… he doesn\u2019t get support from the team to win the championship.<\/p>\n

“You lose a little bit your mojo. You have doubts and you don\u2019t perform – as you called the dice man – you don\u2019t perform anymore without, you know…<\/p>\n

“I\u2019m here to win, because at the beginning of the season he had no pressure because he was number two in the team and – unofficially, obviously not officially – but again Lando is there a lot longer, he\u2019s a lot older, he\u2019s got a lot more experience.<\/p>\n

\"Charles <\/p>\n

Charles Leclerc, Ferrari, Lewis Hamilton, Ferrari, Lando Norris, McLaren, Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing<\/p>\n

Photo by: Bryn Lennon \/ Formula 1 via Getty Images<\/p>\n

“Oscar comes up, wins races, puts himself in the position.. I mean everything goes right. Then I think with all these papaya rules I don\u2019t remember them all when they, you know, \u2018let him pass\u2019, \u2018let him go\u2019, \u2018Oh, I go.\u2019 I mean, \u2018let Max go,\u2019 all that stuff.<\/p>\n

“In the end, I think he lost a little bit of confidence and therefore qualifying, you\u2019re out there on your own. It\u2019s just difficult. Didn\u2019t have a good lap. You start in Mexico where he started. You haven\u2019t got a chance, you know?\u201d<\/p>\n

Despite this, Steiner warned against drawing too many conclusions from Mexico’s pecking order. With the high altitude having an effect on each car, he argued it would be premature to believe that the Red Bull cars are no longer faster than the McLarens.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think going back to the performance of McLaren and Red Bull in Mexico – Mexico is such a special race course with the altitude,” he continued. “So we shouldn’t jump to a conclusion that the Red Bull is not good anymore.<\/p>\n

“I wouldn’t say yes or no. I just would say I don’t know because it’s one of the things Mexico you can have a very good car and you don’t know where it is coming from because, it’s like, you don’t develop a specific car for Mexico because you put a lot of more cooling in the car and you lose obviously downforce and some people lose more and some less but it’s not something you do.<\/p>\n

“You always try not to lose downforce by cooling the car more but sometimes it goes better sometimes worse. So I wouldn’t jump to the conclusion that the Red Bull is not as good as it was in Austin.\u201d<\/p>\n

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– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Guenther Steiner has made a U-turn on Max Verstappen’s title chances, telling\u00a0The Red Flags Podcast that the Red…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":253278,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,141204,817,813,816,149851,825,913,141203,2333,946,85,1511],"class_list":["post-253277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-autodromo-hermanos-rodriguez","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-guenther-steiner-slams-mclaren-in-red-bull-u-turn-papaya-rules-are-for-max","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mclaren","tag-mexican-gp","tag-oscar-piastri","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sports","tag-trendingteam"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253277","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=253277"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/253277\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/253278"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=253277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=253277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=253277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}