Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has finally ruled Max Verstappen out of defending his 2024 F1 drivers’ title, following a challenging Hungarian Grand Prix.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Verstappen started from eighth but actually finished a position lower in ninth, despite several excellent overtakes, particularly into Turn 6 in the early stages.\u00a0<\/p>\n
To add to the Dutchman’s woes, McLaren secured yet another one-two, with Lando Norris securing victory ahead of Oscar Piastri.\u00a0<\/p>\n
As a result, Verstappen has fallen to 97 points adrift, making Marko now rule the four-time world champion out of retaining his crown.<\/p>\n
“It\u2019s impossible, clearly,” he replied to media, on if Verstappen’s title chances are over.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Despite the Milton Keynes-based outfit’s difficulties, Marko had long still believed this season could be Verstappen’s. It represents the first time he has ruled the 27-year-old out of the title fight.<\/p>\n
The Hungaroring was a nightmare for Red Bull and Verstappen, with a two-stop strategy having not worked for the reigning world champion.\u00a0<\/p>\n
In hindsight, Marko wishes a one-stop had been conducted, considering the pace Verstappen had at times.<\/p>\n
“[Red Bull’s performance was] inferior, but I think one stop would have been better, because overtaking was really difficult,” added Marko.<\/p>\n
“So maybe sixth or fifth [was possible], but the speed, which was funny, two or three laps, [Verstappen] was doing the same laps like the leaders, 1:19.5, but we believe we know what went wrong.”<\/p>\n
Following a bad start, Verstappen did briefly progress to fifth, before completing a second pit-stop.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Unfortunately, too much time was lost with the second pit-stop, as those battling for fifth were on one-stop strategies.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe first stops, the tyres were gone, and the second stop, we thought we could overtake. But as we saw for a couple of laps, yes, the speed was there, but then it was over.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Red Bull motorsport advisor Helmut Marko has finally ruled Max Verstappen out of defending his 2024 F1 drivers’…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42656,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,827,830,828,831,829,826,813,823,825,806,805,824,803,804,822,85],"class_list":["post-42840","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-daniel-ricciardo","tag-f1-calendar","tag-f1-live","tag-f1-results","tag-f1-standings","tag-ferrari","tag-formula-1","tag-lewis-hamilton","tag-max-verstappen","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motorsport","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-racing","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42840","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=42840"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42840\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42656"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42840"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42840"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42840"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}