‘Can you write it in capitals?’: McLaren says Verstappen is back. This is how he can win the title

“YES.”

That was Andrea Stella’s answer, printed verbatim, when asked whether Max Verstappen was a contender for the 2025 drivers championship.

At face value the prospect seems outlandish. At the time of Stella’s proclamation, Verstappen was almost 100 points off the championship lead, his Red Bull Racing car so wild and unpredictable that the four-time champion had taken home just one podium trophy in the seven rounds before the mid-season break.

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It was a run of form so poor that the Dutchman said only three rounds ago — in Hungary, where he finished ninth — that he was unlikely to win another race this season.

But that was then. He’s now on a two-race victory streak — his first since last June — and a three-round podium run.

Victory in Baku slashed his deficit down to 69 points, and suddenly he has the momentum.

Stella saw it coming. Speaking after Verstappen put on a qualifying masterclass to take pole, he said his fears over Red Bull Racing’s Italian Grand Prix upgrade package were coming true.

“[Red Bull Racing] have taken a new floor to Monza,” he said, per ESPN. “They might be setting up their car slightly differently. We hear now Verstappen talking about grounding much more than it was doing before.

“So they might have unlocked performance, and I would not be surprised at all that Red Bull continues the streak that they have started.

“Pole position in Monza, victory, pole position here — Red Bull are a very serious contender to win races and a very serious contender for the drivers championship.”

Asked if we was serious about Verstappen being in the hunt, Stella was unequivocal.

“A firm YES. Can you write it in capitals? Because it was quoted in capitals.”

PIT TALK PODCAST: Oscar Piastri got out of jail in Baku after Lando Norris failed to punish him for his error-strewn weekend, with the gap between them shrinking by only six points.

THE PERMUTATIONS

It’s one thing to believe Verstappen’s form is sustainable. It’s another to chart a realistic course from his place on the title table to the top by Abu Dhabi.

With seven rounds to go, Verstappen is 69 points adrift of Piastri and 44 points behind Norris.

With sprints included, there are 199 points up for grabs between Singapore and Abu Dhabi.

Verstappen’s required score rate is 9.9 points per weekend.

In simple terms that means he would need to win all remaining races with Norris second or lower and Piastri no higher than third to clinch it — a very tall order.

“I personally don’t think about it,” Verstappen said. “I just go race by race, what I have been doing basically the whole season, just trying to do the best we can, trying to score the most points that we can, and then after Abu Dhabi we’ll know.”

But he didn’t deny it was possible — a notably increase in optimism compared to previous months.

The last three rounds have proved that the form guide is far from settled and that nothing can be taken for granted — it was unimaginable that the second part of the year would start with the McLaren drivers failing to finish a race each, for example.

History suggests Verstappen is far from out of it. Drivers have come back from worse.

The below data has been calculated using today’s points system to make the title fightbacks comparable with Verstappen’s task.

Formula 1’s biggest comebacks

1. Kimi Räikkönen defeats Lewis Hamilton (2007): 21.25 points per round (two rounds remaining)

2. James Hunt defeats Niki Lauda (1976): 15.7 points per round (three rounds)

3. Alain Prost defeats Nigel Mansell (1986): 15.3 points per round (two rounds)

4. Nelson Piquet defeats Alain Prost (1983): 13.0 points per round (three rounds)

5. Sebastian Vettel defeats Fernando Alonso (2010): 12.5 points per round (two rounds)

6. John Surtees defeats Jim Clark (1964): 11.1 points per round (five rounds)

As a possible counterpoint, it’s worth considering that last year Norris had a smaller gap (59 points) to Verstappen at exactly this stage of the season. His momentum petered out significantly at the United States Grand Prix.

It should also be noted that if Verstappen were to win the title, he would have pulled off a 104-point comeback in nine rounds, his deficit having peaked after the Dutch Grand Prix. In that case we’d be talking about an even bigger turnaround of 11.6 points per round.

Of course just because bigger comebacks exist doesn’t mean Verstappen’s charge will be easy or even that it’s probable. The above six examples are all-time great performances and represent some of the biggest twists in championship history.

They are also all much shorter turnarounds. Verstappen needs to execute perfectly for seven weekends and hope luck stays on his side for the duration.

Pulling it off would be remarkable, and even in a career already glittering with achievement, it would stand as his finest moment.

WHAT STELLA MOST FEARS

But despite the mathematical improbability, there’s no denying Red Bull Racing’s turnaround. Before the mid-season break the RB21 looked destined to fizzle out of the season, but since the break it’s looked renewed.

Verstappen has praised new processes and approaches to the tricky car that were paying dividends. Red Bull motorsport adviser called it a “rebirth”.

The subtext was that new team boss Laurent Mekies, who replaced Christian Horner in July, had brought an important a fresh perspective to a team in a tailspin.

The subsequent run of form has been impressive enough to recontextualise Verstappen’s entire season.

Verstappen has more poles than either McLaren driver, with six — remarkable given his RB21 has rarely been the fastest car.

His four wins put him just one short of Norris and three short of Piastri.

He’s led more laps this season than Norris, heading the field for 282 tours to the Briton’s 241. Piastri has led 392 laps.

The reigning champion is also the highest scoring driver since the mid-season break, raking in 68 points to Piastri’s 40 and Norris’s 24. The maximum score for the last three rounds was 75 points.

Those are some impressive statistics — too impressive, perhaps, for someone to be considered out of contention.

“We’re talking about Max Verstappen, we’re talking about Red Bull,” Stella said.

“We know that Max when he has a competitive car can deliver strong weekends.

“Definitely Max is in contention for the drivers championship. We knew it and we got confirmation today.”

It’s not just form that has the McLaren boss worried, however. It’s what he’s seeing in the data since the team upgraded its car in Italy.

The Italian manager believes the upgrade brought to Italy did more than just propel Verstappen to victory at the high-speed track, the sport’s biggest outlier, and then n Baku, a similarly extreme circuit.

According to his analysis, the RB21 is now a potential match for McLaren everywhere.

“They seem to have made an improvement with their car, because the way they won Monza was something more than simply a car that adapts well at low drag,” he said.

“They were fast in the corners — medium-speed and low-speed corners — and fast in the straights.”

That sort of consistency has been lacking for Red Bull Racing all season.

Norris’s post-race assessment tallied with Stella’s observation.

“I don’t think we were quite as easily quick as someone like the Red Bull,” he told Sky Sports. “Even following [Yuki] Tsunoda, there were some places where I was like, ‘No chance we could be as quick as them’.

“They’re clearly doing well. Their race pace is strong. They’ve still won plenty of races this year. It’s not a surprise.

“They’ve been a winning team for however many years. We knew that they could be a threat.”

WILL McLAREN RESPOND?

Stella might be genuine in his belief that Verstappen is a threat, but it’s hard not to read his words as a warning to his troops.

Complacency kills sporting dynasties, and Stella had just seen Piastri crash out of Q3 and Norris qualify seventh when he decided to put the spotlight on Red Bull Racing’s improvements.

By Sunday night the team had returned its worst score since the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix and had failed to claim the constructors championship.

Being alert to the risk of a late Verstappen charge might be what’s needed to jolt the team back onto an offensive footing if Stella thought there was any risk of complacency creeping in.

It’s interesting to think back to the team order controversy of Monza in this context. While the team had nothing to lose in swapping places, exerting that level of micromanagement on the title fight is only possible in a scenario in which McLaren has absolute control over all the variables.

Before Red Bull Racing’s form improvement, that appeared to be the case. It seemed certain the drivers title would go to either Piastri or Norris.

But if Verstappen really is in the frame, can McLaren really afford to fuss over details that might better fall under the heading of ‘racing incidents’?

It could pose another uncomfortable question for McLaren too: will it have to contemplate backing one driver over another?

We’re a long way from that point. Verstappen’s title eligibility for now is purely mathematical. But if the Dutchman wins a few more races, and if Piastri and Norris miss a few podiums, the sound of footsteps echoing through the corridor will grow louder.

McLaren’s problem then will be the fact Piastri and Norris will presumably be taking points off each other, whereas Verstappen has no effective teammate to take points from him.

CEO Zak Brown already had a policy for such a scenario, however.

He’d prefer to lose the drivers title than enact team orders.

“I’m comfortable with that,” he told Planet F1 earlier this year.

“I’m comfortable with that because the other scenario is: how do you take a driver out of the championship that’s competing for the championship? That’s not right at all.

“There’s just no way we will.”

BUT IS IT REALLY SUSTAINABLE?

The prospect of McLaren picking — or not — a winner is still a long way down the road, and there’s one important question that needs an answer before we get there.

The evidence of Red Bull Racing’s resurgence is based on results at two very particular high-speed circuits.

Both Monza and Baku reward cars with low-downforce set-ups, and it appears Verstappen and his side of the garage took a very similar approach to both circuits. Both weekends they ran with a very skinny rear wing and balanced the car with a bigger front wing, making it responsive on turn-in without being slow down the straights.

The same set-up would not be effective at a high-downforce circuit or any track featuring high-speed corners.

At the high-downforce Dutch Grand Prix, for example — albeit a week before the team brought its Monza upgrade — Verstappen was 0.263 seconds off pole and was shipping 0.23 seconds per lap to Piastri in the race.

That doesn’t mean Red Bull Racing can’t be competitive at other circuits with this upgrade. It means only that it must be proved.

“Monza is so specific, it was not so clear how much of the progress we could bring on a track like here, so it’s good feedback for everyone that has been pushing so hard in Milton Keynes to get the car faster,” Red Bull Racing boss Laurent Mekies said. “We know Baku is also very specific, with only slow-speed corners, but certainly it’s two tracks in a row where at least we had the pace to fight.

“Here we are back in the game, but Singapore is very, very different in two weeks time.

“Then again, the rest of the season is back to the medium-speed corners where McLaren had a huge advantage only a couple of races ago. It will be part to the challenge.”

But there are reasons for the team to be optimistic.

“The car was doing pretty much what I wanted it to do,” Verstappen said after winning the race in the most positive commentary of the RB21 all year.

“This season has been really swinging left and right, but at least now two weekends in a row it’s been going really well.”

Mekies says it’s not by accident that Verstappen has found the sweet spot again.

“Nobody has ever given up on this season in terms of understanding why we were not reaching the level we wanted,” he said.

“Little by little — there is no silver bullet, there is no big item, but there have been a few things that have been unlocked from everyone at the factory. There have been a few things at the track that have been unlocked from the work that Max and Yuki have been doing with their engineers.

“All together it seems to add up.”

It sets up the next two rounds, in Singapore and the United States, as crucial.

Verstappen has never won in Singapore, and Red Bull Racing has won there just once in the last 11 years. The stifling conditions, the bumpiness of the public roads and the harshness of the kerbs have always antagonised its cars.

Austin has been a happier hunting ground, but on paper the corner profiles and conditions should heavily favour McLaren.

If Verstappen can walk away with another two victories, Red Bull Racing will be able to say definitively that it’s back in the game.

Stella will have been right.

And the championship will have changed.