Formula One champions Red Bull hope to pick up the pace over the last six rounds of the season after Max Verstappen emerged stronger than expected from back-to-back street races in Azerbaijan and Singapore, team boss Christian Horner said.
The triple world champion, who will be 27 next week, had his advantage over McLaren’s Lando Norris cut from 62 points after the Italian Grand Prix at Monza on Sept. 1 to a current 52.
The season now has a four-week lull before a U.S.-Mexico-Brazil sequence starting in Austin, Texas, on Oct. 20, followed by another final triple-header of Las Vegas-Qatar-Abu Dhabi. “I think we’ve got a vein of development and I think we’ve understood some of the issues with the car. I think we’re starting to address them,” Horner told reporters after Verstappen finished a distant second to Norris in Singapore. “We were better in Baku, we were better here.” Verstappen finished fifth in Baku after sixth at Monza, a result that equalled Monaco in May as his worst of the season so far but could have been far worse.