Verstappen still optimistic about 2024 title prospects

When the current season started, the main discussion point was whether Red Bull would sweep all 24 races and how quickly Max Verstappen would lock down the title. How quickly things change in F1.

Verstappen used similar words talking to the media after finishing the Singapore Grand Prix in a solid second at Marina Bay, when asked if winning the title was still viable.

"Yeah, it is," Verstappen insisted when questioned by the media in parc ferme after the chequered flag. "In general McLaren is stronger at the moment, but this can change again very quickly."

The three-time world champion won seven of the first ten races of the season but that run came to a sudden end and he's not had a victory since Spain, while Lando Norris had emerged as his main title challenger.

The McLaren driver won on Sunday to shave another eight points off Verstappen's points lead, with 51 points between the pair with six races and three sprints remaining in this year's world championship.

• Read also: Sparkling floodlit walkover for Norris over Verstappen and Piastri

More worrying was the dominance of the McLaren over the Red Bull and the rest of the cars on the grid. With that sort of advantage, Norris has a real chance ot catching Verstappen by the season finale in Abu Dhabi in December.

"We just need to keep on trying," Verstappen said. "Of course we're not happy with second, so now we just have to try and improve more and more. That's all we'll try to do - try to overturn it a bit, not always finishing behind.

"But we'll see how that goes," he said, admitting that he couldn't have done better than second today and had no way of catching Norris and stealing victory at any point.

"Trying to do the best I could, try to manage my own pace to the end," he said, pleased to have limited the damage to his points standings. "I think that's pretty much my race just by myself."

"I think the first stint was a bit difficult for us," he noted. "Quite a bit of tyre degradation. The second stint [on hard tyres] was a bit better. I was a bit more comfortable as well.

"It's difficult to attack the turns. Going in and out of the turns you lose speed. I lost a lot of time that way, and then the hobbles and curbstones also chip away at your progress.

Singapore is not one of Red Bull's favourite circuit. It's the only track on the current F1 calendar where Verstappen is get to win. and last year it was the only circuit Red Bull didn't claim victory.

"It was a weekend where we knew that we were going to struggle," Verstappen said. "P2 is the maximum we could acheive, since we did keep one of the two cars behind.

"I tried to do the best I could, tried to manage my own pace till the end."

In contrast, his team mate Sergio Perez has won here, emerging victorious in the 2022 Grand Prix over Ferrari despite incurring a five second penalty for a safety car infringement.

But Perez wasn't in the mix this week problems in qualifying leaving him starting from 13th on the grid on a circuit where overtaking is never easy meaning he ended up mired in tenth place.

"We had a great start but we lost an opportunity to undercut some cars," Perez declared. "After passing three cars at the start, it was frustrating and I think we missed out a bit on the strategy side.

"I struggled quite a lot with the car bouncing and the balance, it was just not settling down, I had a real issue with it. It became impossible to overtake," he added. W"e understand where the issues are, there is a fix but this was a very difficult track for us

Perez' poor result is part of the reason McLaren was able to double their lead in the constructors standings to over 40 points, meaning Red Bull could end 2024 without any new silverware for the trophy room at Milton Keynes. No one was expecting that when the season started.

Keep up to date with all the F1 news via Facebook and Twitter