Max Verstappen’s title warning a message to ‘wake everyone up’ at Red Bull

Max Verstappen’s proclamation that both titles are on the line despite his 62-point lead in the Drivers’ is not “strange” to Jeroen Bleekemolen as it was meant as a “wake up” to Red Bull.

Red Bull’s lead in the Constructors’ and Drivers’ standings were slashed by McLaren and Lando Norris at the Italian Grand Prix when the Woking team grabbed a double podium while Verstappen was Red Bull’s best-placed driver in sixth place.

Max Verstappen warned both titles are ‘not realistic’ for Red Bull

Red Bull recorded their worst two-car points haul at the Italian Grand Prix where, lining up seventh and eighth on the grid, Verstappen made up one position while his team-mate Sergio Perez remained P8.

Scoring 12 points to McLaren’s 34, Red Bull’s lead in the Constructors’ Championship was dealt a massive blow with just eight points now separating the teams with eight races remaining.

Verstappen’s advantage in the Drivers’ standings was also reduced, but only by eight points thanks in part to McLaren’s “sporting behaviour”, as Helmut Marko put it, as they refused to use team orders to favour Norris.

Verstappen though issued a worrying “not realistic” claim when asked about Red Bull’s prospects of retaining both titles.

But while Bleekemolen has downplayed his chances of losing the Drivers’ title to Norris, the 42-year-old Dutch racing driver and pundit reckons that was Verstappen issuing a “wake up” to Red Bull.

“Yes, that chance [of the title] is still quite big,” the Dutch racing driver told Motorsport.com.

“Look, that Max says, this is of course also a logical calculation and reasoning, so I don’t think that’s strange. And I think it’s also a sign from him to wake everyone up guys, this is not going well.”

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But, he added: “I agree with him 100 percent about the Constructors’ title. It’s just not going to happen. It’s a simple calculation.”

Red Bull are scrambling to resolve a massive balance issue with the RB20 but while Marko says they have now decided on a way forward after some input from Verstappen, Bleekemolen is not foreseeing a simple solution.

“Look, the problem is that they don’t know it themselves, because otherwise the solution would have come. The difficult thing about the story is that the car is so unpredictable.

“Red Bull does not know the solution, so that is very annoying. But they have to keep calm now and just look at this realistically.

“Investigate, what could it be? With which package should we start the next race? And yes, start again. And it may well be that they slowly get that car under control again, but it is a very big problem if you do not know where the problem lies.

“It’s a matter of continuously making adjustments. Continuously looking at what happens, how something reacts in real life compared to that wind tunnel. But that too is just very difficult, you have so many variables and it could just be that with a certain update you have something that you can copy one-on-one from the wind tunnel.”

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