Verstappen assesses where Red Bull stand ahead of first race

Max Verstappen believes that Red Bull are “not the quickest at the moment” going into the first race of the 2025 season in Australia, though the Dutchman is confident that the picture can “change quite quickly” as the year progresses.

After starting out as a dominant force in 2024, the Milton Keynes-based outfit were overtaken in the Teams’ Championship later in the campaign by McLaren and Ferrari as the field became increasingly competitive, while Verstappen held onto the Drivers’ Championship despite a challenge from Lando Norris.

LIVE COVERAGE: Follow all the build-up ahead of the Australian Grand Prix weekend

Asked ahead of the weekend in Melbourne about the sort of shape that Red Bull are in entering into this season, Verstappen responded: “Positive shape, I guess. I don’t know! I guess we’ll find out more this weekend and after.

“We’ll try to do our best – there’s not really much more that we can do. Testing is not many days, so we found a few areas we can work on and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”

MELBOURNE, AUSTRALIA - MARCH 12: Max Verstappen of the Netherlands and Oracle Red Bull Racing and — Verstappen will partner with new team mate Liam Lawson at Red Bull in 2025

In terms of whether the RB21 felt like a step forward from its predecessor during the three days of pre-season testing at the Bahrain International Circuit, the reigning World Champion added: “Yeah, I think naturally there’s an improvement, but there are still things that we want to improve on and to do better.

“This is a different track to Bahrain so that already will feel a bit different to drive the car here, but step by step.”

Verstappen suggested that it is “impossible to know at the moment” if the 2025 season will see an even tighter battle play out than in the previous campaign, but acknowledged that – as was the case last year – things can change rapidly.

“I know that we are not the quickest at the moment, but again it’s a very long season,” the 27-year-old said. “If you would have asked that question here last year then at the end of the season again it looked completely different, so a lot of things can always change quite quickly in Formula 1.”

The team experienced some issues with the RB20 last season, but Verstappen is hopeful that the squad will continue to address the problems as much as is possible before switching focus to the incoming set of new regulations that come into effect in 2026.

“We’ll try our best to make it as competitive as possible,” he explained. “It’s the final year of the regulations so I guess up to a certain point you focus on this year and then naturally you focus on a whole different thing.

BAHRAIN, BAHRAIN - FEBRUARY 28: Max Verstappen of the Netherlands driving the (1) Oracle Red Bull — Verstappen says that Red Bull will make the RB21 "more driveable" than its predecessor

“We’ll make it more driveable, but Bahrain is very different to what we get here so it’s a bit difficult to say if things have been fully fixed or not. I guess we just have to be patient and see how much we can regain.”

And with this campaign marking the fourth occasion that Verstappen will be defending his championship, the Red Bull driver was quizzed on what makes for a successful title defence.

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“There’s a lot of things you make me think about that I actually don’t think about!” he joked. “It’s actually way more relaxing to just go into it, trust the people around you and go from there.

“[You] work hard on and off track, try to address things you don’t like on the car or whatever, and always try to do the best on track yourself, try to minimise mistakes and keep scoring points.”