Red Bull team principal Christian Horner admitted Max Verstappen’s chances of winning the world championship this year look remote after the Austrian Grand Prix.
Verstappen retired on the first lap of the race when he was hit by Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes. The rookie was given a three-place grid drop for the collision.“It was desperately unlucky for Max to be just taken out at turn three,” Horner told Viaplay. “He’d done nothing wrong. He’d had a good start, he’d made progress.”
The championship-leading McLaren drivers finished the race first and second, ahead of the Ferrari pair. “It’s a shame because I don’t think we’d have raced the McLarens today but I think we would have probably been racing the Ferraris pretty hard,” said Horner.
Verstappen’s retirement means he lies 61 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri with 359 points still available. Asked whether he thinks Verstappen can overhaul that deficit Horner said: “It’s unrealistic but you never give up.”
The crash capped a frustrating weekend for Verstappen at Red Bull’s home track. Having been third quickest in final practice he was unable to complete his final flying lap in qualifying due to a yellow flag. That left him seventh on the grid, two places ahead of Antonelli, who was also compromised by the same yellow flag in Q3.
It was a point-less home race for Red Bull as Yuki Tsunoda was the last driver to take the chequered flag in 16th place after a penalty for colliding with Franco Colapinto. However Red Bull’s junior team, Racing Bulls, scored sixth place courtesy of Liam Lawson.
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Horner, who replaced Lawson with Tsunoda in his team’s line-up after the second race of the season, said “he drove well, their strategy worked well for them.” However he felt the performance of some cars in the race had been “weird.”
“You’ve got the winner of the last race [George Russell, 62 seconds behind the race winner, and the Racing Bulls and the Sauber were catching the Mercedes at the end there. So it was very hard to predict.”
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PeteB (@peteb)
30th June 2025, 12:30
It’s a big gap but it’s not insurmountable. He’a going to need a bit of luck but as Norris and Piastri get closer to winning the title, the pressure will ramp up and the gloves will come off.
I very much doubt we’ve seen them make contact for the last time this season and Max has to be in position to capitalise when it happens.
BasCB (@bascb)
30th June 2025, 14:07
Yeah, funny how last year we were talking about Norris having a shot at the championship when he was FAR more behind at a later stage of the season and now Max is only 61 points away which could turn fast if Piastri has any DNF (or even a crash with Norris) or some setback. A rain race like Brazil last year can easily do the job.
The points situation really is not that bad at all. The worse part for Red Bull, and for Max’ championship hopes is that they aren’t looking like they are making much progress on understanding how to run their car or change it to do the job on track nor have they shown too much clever strategic thinking or top notch pitwork to catch up.
Edvaldo
30th June 2025, 16:22
It was believed Norris had a shot, even if a very small one, because McLaren was on the up high and Red Bull was struggling. Just because of that.
Now, Max is behind, and still, McLaren is dominating while Piastri is driving much better than he did last year, so even if Norris fails, Piastri will be there to take the result.
McLaren won 8 ou of 11 after all. They’ve learned their lesson.
Esploratore (@esploratore1)
1st July 2025, 2:51
Yes, there’s no chance at this point this year, not because he got hit, but I believe even beating the ferraris wouldn’t have been easy, mclaren is just too strong and red bull too bad this year, so it’s back to 2018, taking risks for the odd win on a favourable circuit.
anon
30th June 2025, 20:02
@bascb as noted by Edvaldo, whilst the points difference may look more favourable at first glance, a more detailed look indicates overturning that points deficit is going to be quite challenging.
The current performance balance currently looks like it’s in McLaren’s favour, with the upcoming tracks and conditions likely to favour them relative to Red Bull. Red Bull had taken advantage earlier in the season where they could, but we’re entering a stretch of races where the balance of performance will probably be more biased towards McLaren.
Furthermore, whilst we’ve seen a few recent races where McLaren looked less competitive, such as Canada, Verstappen has also had the problem that he’s been fighting other teams for potential victory. In 2024, whilst Norris may have had a chance, he couldn’t consistently bring down the points gap to Verstappen because there were times when other drivers ended up taking more points away from Norris than from Verstappen – and, right now, Verstappen is finding himself to be in the position Norris was in a little while ago.
Added to that, Red Bull is now reaching a point where it’s having to cut off development work for 2025. Marko has indicated that the team will be bringing some small updates to Silverstone, but that’s probably going to mark the end of any major development work on this car due to the upcoming major rule changes in 2026.
BMW P85 V10
30th June 2025, 21:17
I think that McLaren will introduce strict team orders once Norris & Piastri will have a zero points weekend after a collisions between the two of them. It’s their championship to loose, and from this point on they can only loose if they gice it away or the FIA finds something on their cars that’s against the rules which will give them a major setback.
JMDan (@danmar)
30th June 2025, 12:54
You don’t have to win every year. Michael didn’t. Lewis didn’t. Senna didn’t.
pcxmac (@pcxmac)
30th June 2025, 18:30
its part of the confidence game, if he cant win always, then you could say his valuation is 50% easy. Tack on another 50% penalty if hes winning only a few times a year.
At the end of the day F1 is about money, and Max and co are just not happy he doesn’t have the fastest car by a country mile. And if Jos is really trying to still get rid of Horner, then I would totally get rid of Max, his family is too toxic to deal with, if this is the case, nobody is worth that kind of drama and political infighting. Obviously Porsche|Maybe Toto is still creeping around and trying to overthrow Horner if Jos is still needling. I really hope for all Horner can get rid of Max if this really is the case though, nothing is more detrimental to a team and it’s integrity than someone who has to have everything for themself.
Red Bull are consistently one of the best teams in F1 because they are competitive, and don’t behave like entitled pensioners (Ferrari).
David BR (@david-br)
30th June 2025, 23:19
I don’t know. A mid-season switch to Mercedes and it could still be on…