Max Verstappen keeps the poker face, even as the cards start falling his way.
Two wins on the bounce — Monza, then Baku — have dragged the Red Bull driver back into the conversation he’d all but been written out of. The deficit to championship leader Oscar Piastri is down to 69 points with seven rounds to go. That’s still a gulf, but it no longer looks like the Mariana Trench.
Three months ago, Red Bull’s own Helmut Marko was calling the chase “almost impossible” after Austria. Now the RB21 looks awake and fighting fit, and McLaren have handed back a chunk of margin through a messy stretch. Suddenly, “impossible” has a bit of daylight.
Verstappen’s tone hasn’t changed, though. He isn’t biting on the narrative.
“I don’t rely on hope, but it’s seven rounds left,” he said after a clinical Azerbaijan Grand Prix. “Sixty-nine points is a lot, so I personally don’t think about it. I just go race-by-race. What I’ve been doing basically the whole season — try to score the most points we can — and then after Abu Dhabi, we’ll know.”
On Sunday in Baku, there wasn’t much to debate. After lap one, the Dutchman vanished, never again troubling the TV director except to collect his trophy — the sort of Verstappen win that feels like a screensaver. That made it career victory number 67, and it came with the kind of confidence he’s been waiting to feel all year.
“I think overall, just a great weekend for us,” he said. “Starting up front was key, especially in the beginning, just managing your tyres to go long. Monza has never really been a particularly strong track for us so to do that was already a big plus. And here in Baku, it’s been alright, but never amazing… so to have a weekend like this was very important.”
That’s the thing: for all the talk about the title arithmetic, the eye test was the giveaway. The RB21 finally looked obedient in both Italy and Azerbaijan — straightline speed in Monza without wrecking the tyres, and enough rear grip in Baku to let Verstappen lean on it from the opening laps. The car that skittered and sulked through the early summer is, at last, putting up a fight.
Piastri isn’t pretending not to notice. The Australian, who still heads the standings, wasn’t keen to pour fuel on the storyline but he left the door cracked.
“I’m not going to rule him out,” he said. “But I’m honestly not too concerned with that. I’m just trying to bounce back from this weekend and put in the best performances that I can. I know that if I get back to where I know I can be, then I’ll be more than okay.”
That kind of composure is exactly why McLaren have trusted him to steer this title bid, but it’s also an admission: form has slipped, and Verstappen doesn’t need an engraved invitation to make that hurt.
This isn’t 2023’s flat-track bully version of Red Bull. This is the grind. The team took their medicine through the mid-season, kept iterating, and showed up to two tricky venues with a car that suddenly made sense again. Monza is rarely their happy place; Baku can bite. Red Bull walked away from both looking like the sharper outfit on execution, too.
So where does that leave the championship? If you prefer spreadsheets, the 69-point gap says Piastri still owns the odds. If you prefer weather vanes, the wind just changed direction. Seven races isn’t an eternity, but it’s enough for a late-season swing — especially if Red Bull can keep this setup window open and McLaren don’t tidy up the weekends that have slipped away.
Verstappen, predictably, won’t engage in any of that. Race by race. Points on the board. See you in Abu Dhabi. But he doesn’t need to say it for everyone else to think it: the chase is back on, whether he acknowledges it or not.
And there’s a psychological layer, too. It matters that Verstappen has reminded the paddock what a standard, uneventful Max win looks like — no drama, no elbows, just disappearance. It matters that he’s talking about the car in the present tense with some warmth, not just caveats. It matters that Piastri, excellent as he’s been, felt the need to make clear he won’t rule the reigning champion out.
We’ve seen this movie. The middle act is Verstappen turning up the pressure while the opposition tries not to blink. The third act is where titles are decided.
For now, take Verstappen at his word. No hope, no bluster, just laps. But after Monza and Baku, those laps look heavy again — the kind that move a championship needle all on their own.
