Helmut Marko responds to ‘very optimistic’ Stella comment about Max Verstappen

McLaren team principal Andrea Stella made it clear that Max Verstappen is back in the Drivers’ Championship hunt. He said it with “capital letters” to emphasise that belief.

In the opinion of Red Bull senior advisor Helmut Marko, that was a “very optimistic” thing of the McLaren boss to say. In Marko’s view, Red Bull and Verstappen can start “dreaming” if the Singapore Grand Prix sees a continuation of their recent resurgence.

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It had widely been accepted that McLaren duo Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris were in a head-to-head battle for the Drivers’ Championship. But, Verstappen and Red Bull are threatening to gatecrash the McLaren party.

Red Bull introduced an extensive upgrade package for the RB21 at Spa, which is apparently now starting to unlock results.

Verstappen claimed pole position and comfortable race wins at the Italian and Azerbaijan GPs, reducing the gap to championship leader Piastri to 69 points.

After a nightmare weekend for McLaren in Baku, where Norris finished seventh and Piastri crashed out, team principal Stella declared Verstappen back in the hunt.

“I used the capital letters already yesterday, when I said yes in capital letters, and today, I think it just confirms,” said Stella of Verstappen’s potential threat.

“We’re talking about Max Verstappen. We’re talking about Red Bull. We have already seen in Monza that they improved.

“They seemed to have made an improvement with their car, because the way they won Monza was something more, for what was our assessment, than simply a car that adapts well at low drag. They were fast in the corners, medium speed and low speed corners, fast in the straights.

“And we know that Max, when he has a competitive car, can deliver strong weekends.

“Conversely, we also knew that here in Baku for us would have been a difficult circuit. So we will see now in Singapore, which should be more of a one in which we should perform well. Hopefully, we can go back to fighting for victories, and then we will see how the rest of the championship will unfold.

“But definitely, Max is in the contention for the Drivers’ Championship. We knew it, and we got confirmation today.”

Stella’s comments caught the attention of Marko, who offered his viewpoint.

“What Andrea said is very optimistic, but I hope he’s right!” Marko said, as per De Telegraaf.

“The gap is still big, and it’s not often that a McLaren doesn’t cross the finish line. But we’ll see.

“If we’re competitive in Singapore in two weeks’ time, maybe we can start dreaming.”

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The Marina Bay Street Circuit has become something of a bogey track for Red Bull over recent years. Even in their record-breaking season of F1 dominance in 2023, this was the one race which Red Bull did not win, Verstappen restricted to fifth.

“Not only is it a different circuit, but it’s also boiling hot,” Marko noted on Singapore. “Our car doesn’t always like that.

“Singapore will be the benchmark for where we really stand. And we’ve always said, we have to be as close as possible to McLaren to make them nervous.”

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