After the Canada race concludes, Max Verstappen and Lando Norris join in celebration.
Failing to score a single point in the last two races, Max Verstappen is hoping Sergio Perez can get “back up there” as he needs his team-mate to help him in the championship.
After securing three 1-2 finishes in the first four races, Red Bull seemed poised to dominate the championship titles. However, McLaren and Ferrari narrowed the gap by implementing upgrades early in the season.
Max Verstappen: The damage was done in qualifying
Since Miami, the current World Champion has been involved in an intense battle for Grand Prix victories, with McLaren, Verstappen, Ferrari, and Verstappen taking turns at the forefront.
But unlike McLaren and Ferrari, Red Bull have just one driver in the race.
In three consecutive races, Verstappen’s teammate Perez has been unable to make it to Q3 during qualifying. Additionally, in Monaco and Montreal, he faced even more disappointment as he didn’t even manage to advance past Q1. To make matters worse, he ended up crashing in both Grand Prix races.
Red Bull extended their lead in the Constructors’ Championship in Canada, despite not scoring any points in two consecutive races. This was possible due to Verstappen’s sixth victory of the season and both Ferrari cars retiring from the race.
Verstappen wishes for his team-mate’s difficulties to be a singular occurrence.
He expressed his belief that the harm had already been done the previous day for Checo. “Beginning from the rear, it becomes exceedingly challenging in such circumstances. And, naturally, I witnessed him withdrawing due to the inflicted damage.”
I understood that in order to prevent the other teams from catching up significantly, it was essential for me to achieve a high score.
However, I believe that ultimately, as long as you continue to win, even if the others finish in second or third place, you don’t really suffer much. In this way, you can occasionally afford these occasional occurrences.
“However, it is evident that we always desire both cars to be present up there. Furthermore, I am confident that this situation will undergo rapid change in the near future once more.”
To be frank, our car needs some improvements to make it easier and more comfortable to drive. Once we address these issues, I’m confident that both our cars will be back to their initial performance levels at the start of the season.
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Lando Norris tells Max Verstappen ‘two is better than one’
Red Bull left Montreal on 301 points, 49 ahead of Ferrari with McLaren a further 40 off the pace.
Despite missing out on a single race in Miami where Oscar Piastri secured 13th place, McLaren has consistently scored in almost every race with both drivers. This leads Lando Norris to believe that the Woking team still has the potential to mount a strong comeback.
Max believes that McLaren’s biggest strength lies in the fact that “two is better than one,” even in his own case.
The Briton expressed, “Our determination to keep pushing is currently one of our greatest strengths.”
“We are fortunate to have two exceptional McLaren drivers who consistently perform at their best, minimizing errors and extracting the maximum potential of the car every weekend. It’s quite uncommon to find many other teams on the grid with such a remarkable duo.”
“For us, our focus is on how we can challenge Ferrari. We have been a consistently strong team leading up to this weekend, whereas they have made some mistakes and faced difficulties for various reasons.”
However, ultimately, I believe that having two options will be more advantageous than having just one, especially in Max’s situation.
“We have been performing well, but we must continue pushing forward to bring in more upgrades and similar enhancements. The addition of Mercedes will make it even more challenging to achieve significant points, as we did today.”
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