{"id":223003,"date":"2025-10-24T16:09:56","date_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:09:56","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/223003\/"},"modified":"2025-10-24T16:09:56","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T16:09:56","slug":"red-bull-and-max-verstappens-f1-recovery-the-opposite-of-a-surprise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/223003\/","title":{"rendered":"Red Bull and Max Verstappen\u2019s F1 recovery \u201cthe opposite of a surprise\u201d"},"content":{"rendered":"

Lando Norris<\/a> says Red Bull and Max Verstappen<\/a>\u2019s recent resurgence is anything but surprising, and believes McLaren<\/a> has made much bigger steps of its own over the past few years.\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the Dutch Grand Prix in Zandvoort, Verstappen trailed the championship lead by 104 points, but with five rounds remaining that deficit has shrunk to 40. The turnaround comes as Red Bull continued the development of its 2025 car longer than McLaren<\/a>, and understands how to extract more from the RB21 as well. Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko confirmed an interesting theory about ride height, which has been linked to the Monza floor and an improved understanding of the car\u2019s behaviour.\u00a0<\/p>\n

A combination of these factors helped Red Bull make major progress \u2013 a surprise to many in the paddock, but not to Norris. Speaking ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix, the McLaren driver said he is not at all shocked that Verstappen and Red Bull have become title contenders again.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, because they\u2019ve won the last four [two] constructors\u2019 championships before us,\u201d Norris said when asked by Motorsport.com. \u201cThey have some pretty smart people in the team who have won multiple world championships, and they were never that bad.\u00a0They were never that far off.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

According to Norris, Red Bull has been stronger all season than its public messaging suggested. \u201cMax has had many pole positions through the whole year, so it’s not like they were ever bad.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Lando <\/p>\n

Lando Norris, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Steven Tee \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

He emphasised McLaren made bigger gains to get into the position the team is in now than Red Bull: \u201cI think when you understand where we’ve come from a couple of years ago, we made much bigger steps than what they did to win the championships.\u00a0I think when you know what’s possible internally from my team McLaren and how once you start to figure things out and understand what kind of differences you can make, it’s the same with them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cThey have an incredible team that has won many world championships, and an incredible driver. When you put these things together, it cannot be a surprise, especially when you live in the world that it’s in.\u00a0I think when you know everything that goes on and when you understand how the aerodynamics work with the car and all these things, it’s quite the opposite of a surprise.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Norris closing in on Piastri\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Verstappen\u2019s comeback dominates the headlines, Norris has also been clawing back ground on team-mate Oscar Piastri<\/a> since his costly engine failure in Zandvoort. That progress has boosted his belief in the title fight \u2013 even if he admits the task remains challenging.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI certainly believe that I can [become world champion], and do have a much better chance this year than last year, 100%,\u201d Norris said. \u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cAs a driver, I have more confidence in what I did than last season, but that doesn’t necessarily mean I have a much better chance.\u00a0I’m up against a driver who’s improved massively from his second season to his third, and I’m against a four-time world champion. It’s different [from last year], but at the same time I’m against the best drivers in the world, so I don’t expect anything but tough battles.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

\"Oscar <\/p>\n

Oscar Piastri, McLaren<\/p>\n

Photo by: Steven Tee \/ LAT Images via Getty Images<\/p>\n

Were Piastri\u2019s Austin problems circuit-specific?\u00a0<\/p>\n

While Norris has been making up ground, Piastri has endured a rough patch recently. The Australian made multiple mistakes in Baku and struggled for outright pace in Austin. On Sunday night in Texas, he admitted that he didn\u2019t have clear answers yet, although he now believes those struggles were specific to Circuit of the Americas.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think it\u2019s very COTA specific. It was just a messy weekend with everything that went on, so there\u2019s an element of that hampering things,\u201d Piastri replied when asked by Motorsport.com. \u201cBut I think the analysis we\u2019ve done has highlighted that there were a lot of things specific to Austin. I\u2019m not really concerned that those problems will still persist. Obviously, I\u2019m hoping that this weekend is a bit better.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

After the race in Austin, team principal Andrea Stella said McLaren would inspect Piastri\u2019s car to rule out potential chassis issues after the early crash in the sprint.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cNo, I haven\u2019t asked them to change anything,\u201d Piastri clarified. \u201cI think there were some things that were maybe not as good as they could have been, but nothing drastically wrong with the car.\u00a0<\/p>\n

\u201cI think there were a few things in terms of how the weekend played out and how the race panned out that were different to our expectations from a few different angles. But, yeah, while the car maybe wasn\u2019t ideal, if we could do the weekend again, we\u2019d probably do a few things a little bit differently \u2013 but we wouldn\u2019t be changing anything major.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n

Photos from Mexican GP – Thursday<\/p>\n

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Read Also:<\/p>\n

We want your opinion!<\/p>\n

What would you like to see on Motorsport.com?<\/p>\n

Take our 5 minute survey.<\/a><\/p>\n

– The Motorsport.com Team<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Lando Norris says Red Bull and Max Verstappen\u2019s recent resurgence is anything but surprising, and believes McLaren has…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":223004,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[36],"tags":[94383,1687,372,6537,1693,95229,3006,1469,94382,371,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-223003","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-f1","tag-autodromo-hermanos-rodriguez","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-lando-norris","tag-lando-norris-red-bull-and-max-verstappenu2019s-f1-recovery-u201cthe-opposite-of-a-surpriseu201d","tag-max-verstappen","tag-mclaren","tag-mexican-gp","tag-red-bull-racing","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223003","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=223003"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/223003\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/223004"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=223003"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=223003"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=223003"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}