Max Verstappen will be worried by what Red Bull are saying about McLaren behind the scenes

Max Verstappen retained his composure for most of the 2024 F1 season. There were only one or two moments where he seemed to be feeling the pressure.

Verstappen won seven of the first 10 Grands Prix to open up a 69-point lead over Lando Norris. Clearly, it wasn’t going to be a total procession this time thanks to an improvement from McLaren and Ferrari, but a comfortable title defence still appeared to be on the cards.

However, the world champion would then endure a 10-race winless run, his longest since 2020. At the Hungarian Grand Prix, Verstappen publicly argued with Red Bull engineer Gianpiero Lambiase – a sign of his frustration with the team’s trajectory.

Verstappen and Lambiase held clear-the-air talks in Belgium a few days later. The Dutchman decided to take a more constructive approach, looking to limit the damage while correcting Red Bull’s course.

A few months later, he picked up 20 seconds’ worth of penalties at the Mexico City Grand Prix in October for two incidents with Norris in the space of a few corners. Some would argue he lost his cool, while others feel this was a premeditated, cunning attempt to slow his title rival down.

In the end, Norris never got closer than 44 points. He was already running out of races by the time Verstappen emphatically ended his drought at the Sao Paulo GP, and the final winning margin was 63 – just six fewer than the gap after Spain.

Red Bull think McLaren ‘got away with’ breaking the rules

Verstappen was 25.1 seconds ahead of the nearest external challenger at the season opener in Bahrain. The gap was 18.6 seconds in Saudi Arabia, 20.9 in Japan, and 13.8 in China.

How, then, did they go from this level of dominance to third in the constructors’? Adrian Newey admitted Red Bull were ‘flattening out’ as they neared the limits of their concept.

Their efforts to break through the ceiling clearly backfired as the car became difficult to drive. But at the same time, McLaren in particular made remarkable progress, with Ferrari not far behind.

According to The Race, Red Bull are ‘convinced’ that something was amiss. This, in their eyes, wasn’t just a case of losing out in the development war.

The swing was too great for that. Privately, the feeling is that the FIA allowed McLaren to ‘get away with’ rule breaches to ‘encourage a championship fight’.

Red Bull declared McLaren’s front-wing illegal, and also pushed for their ‘mini DRS’ rear wing to be banned. Later, McLaren were accused of injecting water into their tyres as an artificial cooling aid.

Verstappen’s results picked up towards the end of the season with victories in the USA Sprint and the Qatar GP. But Christian Horner and co. saw this as ‘evidence’ that their rivals’ unlawful ‘tricks’ had been curbed.

Where ‘most fans’ want to see Max Verstappen go if he leaves Red Bull

Max Verstappen will be worried by Red Bull’s stance. If it’s true that the FIA are subtly helping rivals, then his run of dominance is logically under threat.

But more to the point, surely Horner’s team should be looking at themselves? They squandered an enormous lead last year, and that demands serious introspection.

If they’re more focused on pointing the finger at their rivals, they could repeat the same mistakes in the season ahead. And that in turn would raise doubts over the future of their superstar driver.

According to one racing driver, ‘most fans’ want to see Verstappen at Ferrari at some point. With Lewis Hamilton arriving alongside Charles Leclerc, that door is unlikely to open until 2027 at the earliest.