Max Verstappen believes McLaren has now emerged as Red Bull’s “most consistent” challenger in Formula 1 towards the end of 2023.
Although it was Ferrari who ended Red Bull’s winning run in Singapore, McLaren has been the Austrian outfit’s outright nearest challenger across the last two rounds.
By bringing two cars home inside the top three on Sunday in Qatar, the Woking-based squad secured consecutive double podium finishes for the first time since 2010.
Despite lining up sixth and 10th on the grid, both Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris crossed the line within six seconds of Verstappen, who claimed his 14th victory of the year.
Verstappen had admitted that the chasing pack was getting closer to Red Bull on Saturday evening after McLaren locked out the front row in the Sprint Shootout and Piastri pipped him to the Sprint victory.
Asked if McLaren’s strong Sunday reaffirmed his earlier comments, Verstappen said: “Yeah, I do think so. I mean, I mentioned before why I think it was that close. But for sure, yeah, I mean, McLaren is making great steps forward, throughout the whole year.
“And from our side, yeah, for sure, we’ll try to improve maybe a little bit this year, but of course mainly for next year.”
While McLaren collected another hefty points haul, both Ferrari and Mercedes were responsible for their own respective troubles.
Ferrari ran with only one car after diagnosing a fuel system issue on Carlos Sainz’s car, with Mercedes’ victory chances thrown away when its two cars made contact at Turn 1.
Verstappen is convinced that McLaren has been more consistent than its rivals, something aided by also upholding the “best driver line-up” out of those select teams.
“I do think that as a team they are probably the most consistent, compared to the others behind us. And I do think they have the best driver line-up out of all of them,” he said.
“So yeah, they are operating really well. And, yeah, it’s going to be interesting to the end of the year, but also I think the start of next year to see where everyone is at.”
However, Verstappen reckons the closer gap could be attributed predominantly to the FIA imposing a maximum 18-stint limit on every competitor amid tyre safety concerns.
The three-time champion asserts that the shorter runs between pit stops mitigated Red Bull’s usual tyre degradation advantage.
“Yeah, I do think that today didn’t help us in terms of like… our trend is normally long stints and looking after our tyres,” he explained.
“This didn’t work for us today, of course, they were too limited, the stints, but I do think at one point, my engineer told me to speed up a bit and we always had the pace to speed up.
“I just have to re-watch the race a little bit to understand a bit more what was going on behind me.”
But Verstappen accepts that McLaren’s progress throughout the season has enabled it to reduce Red Bull’s competitive margin.
“I do think we had a bit more pace in hand if we really needed it but nevertheless, I don’t want to take anything away from McLaren,” he continued.
“They’ve been doing a great job and from us, we see that they are getting closer and closer. So we have to try and of course maintain a bit of a gap.”
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