Max Verstappen rejects Helmut Marko’s ‘lost interest’ in F1 claim

Max Verstappen has shot down the suggestion his interest in F1 waned during Red Bull’s form slump earlier this season.

The four-time world champion appears firmly back in the hunt for a fifth successive drivers’ crown after turning around what was a 104-point deficit to championship leader Oscar Piastri to just 40 points with five races remaining.

Verstappen has finally declared “the chance is there” to win this year’s world championship but admitted after his dominant victory at the United States Grand Prix that he once considered such a turnaround impossible.

Before going on a run of three wins in four races that started at the Italian Grand Prix, Red Bull had been enduring a poor run of competitiveness.

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko suggested Verstappen had “lost a little bit of interest” prior to the team’s stunning resurgence, adding his star driver was “more interested in GT racing”.

Asked if he agreed with Marko’s comments ahead of the Mexico City Grand Prix, Verstappen replied: “No, I don’t.

“Of course it's more enjoyable coming to the race weekends like this than knowing that you don't have a chance to win, but I know for myself that when I sit in the car I will always try to maximise everything that I have and I give it everything.

"So even if I'm fighting for P4 or even a P9, I will always try to get the best out of it.”

On his recent extracurricular exploits in GT racing, Verstappen explained: “Allowing me to do other stuff, this has been planned already for a long time.

“So it's not that this has suddenly come on the radar because these things have to be planned well in advance and the preparation for it as well so that it allowed me this year to compete myself in real life.

"That was the first opportunity but I've been doing this also offline a lot, even racing during F1 weekends online so there's nothing really that has changed in terms of how professional I approach my race weekends.”

Verstappen thriving amid ‘positive pressure’

Verstappen insists he is enjoying the “positive pressure” of being in a title fight he had considered to be over.

“Of course naturally you want to win, you want to win the championship, of course I've won championships very late, very early,” he said.

"Now this one is very different because I think for most of the season it was a lot harder for us, and to be honest with you, to still be in this fight is very surprising. But I take it and now like I said before we need to be perfect, but for me it's just positive pressure.

"I mean, I'm loving what I'm doing. If the car is competitive, it's much better to be racing it than when it's not. So yeah, every race that you do, I know until the end we can't afford any bad luck or mistakes, but this team I think has shown in the past that normally we perform really well under pressure anyway and that's what we'll try to do until the end."