Red Bull team boss Christian Horner believes Max Verstappen still has an outside chance in this year’s championship, despite another victory for Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton.
Hamilton has won five of this year’s seven grands prix while Verstappen profited from Mercedes’ tyre drama at Silverstone to inflict the marque’s only defeat so far.
Since retiring from Formula 1’s opening round in Austria Verstappen has been on the podium at each event, taking second in Hungary, Britain and Spain, and third in Styria and Belgium.
But in spite of his string of podium returns Verstappen is already 47 points down on the reigning World Champion heading into this weekend’s Italian Grand Prix.
“I think we’ve been the outside bet since the Austrian Grand Prix, the first one,” said Horner.
“And, you know, we continue to be an outsider, and have an outside chance in this championship.
“It’s not quite at the halfway point even yet. So it’s a weird old year and things can change but it’s going to have to be quite a change obviously from what we’ve seen so far.
“I mean they’ve [Mercedes] been extremely dominant [in Belgium], but that’s Max’s sixth consecutive podium, he is still second in the Drivers’ Championship.
“It’s a very strong performance on that side we just need to find some more performance to hopefully take the fight to them.”
