The Dutchman is experiencing a start to the season that has nothing to do with recent years. The four-time world champion sits only eighth in the championship and is already 43 points behind George Russell after just two races.
"For me it's no surprise that we're not close to Mercedes, Ferrari or McLaren," Verstappen fired off without hesitation, the Red Bull driver acknowledged that today his team is at best the fourth force on the grid and at times is even behind Haas, something that in previous years was unthinkable. The weekend in China was especially tough because in Saturday qualifying he ended up eighth nearly a second off Antonelli's pole, and in the sprint the day before the gap to Russell was 1.7 seconds, a brutal reality check for a team used to fighting at the front.
When asked if that kind of gap is normal, he was blunt: "I hope not." Verstappen knows the team is far off but he's also clear that even before the start of the season he already imagined they wouldn't be able to compete with Mercedes and Ferrari in the first races. What he didn't expect is that the gap would be so big, leaving them scrambling for answers right out of the gate.
The Dutchman admitted that the road back is going to be long and that he trusts they can be more competitive in the coming races, but with a key detail: the comeback this year is going to be much harder than last year's. In 2025, after the summer break, Verstappen won six races and finished just two points short of taking the title from Lando Norris. Still, that scenario isn't going to repeat itself so easily, given where they currently stand.
"The rules are completely different," he explained, and added that Red Bull finds itself in a much less stable situation than in previous years. One of the factors that weighs the most is that this year they're competing for the first time with their own engine, something they didn't have to worry about before because the power unit came from another factory, and that transition has brought its own set of challenges.
Verstappen said that the team is just as upset as he is with this start, but the reality is that today Red Bull is miles away from the success they had last season. The Dutchman knows there's a lot to improve and that there won't be any magic solutions overnight. The question starting to circulate in the paddock is whether Verstappen is going to stick out this situation all year or if at some point he'll start thinking about something else.