Red Bull pinpoints one improvement with the car that would make Max Verstappen an "automatic" championship contender in 2025

Red Bull's Helmut Marko feels that if the team can build a car that has a bigger working window, then Max Verstappen would once again be in contention for the title in 2025. The 2024 F1 season was interesting as the Austrian team suffered from a sudden drop in competitiveness after the first third of the season.

Since McLaren introduced its first major upgrade in Miami, things changed drastically with Lando Norris's car capable of fighting Verstappen at every race weekend. Red Bull continued to regress as the team tried to find different avenues to improve car performance but struggled to identify what went wrong.

After mid-season, Red Bull was able to make decent improvements to the car and give Verstappen a car capable of fighting for the win at some tracks. However, the working window was quite small and the car tended to fall out of the working range often, to the detriment of its overall performance.

Talking to the Austrian outlet kleinezeitung, Helmut Marko said that if the team can build a car with a big enough performance window, it would be an "automatic" contender for the title with Max Verstappen making the difference as usual:

"The regulations will be in their final year next season, so there will be hardly any changes. The cars of this era have their pitfalls, however, and the working window of the tires in particular causes problems for many teams. Sometimes you can't do anything after a small change in temperature. If you look at the last six months, Ferrari and McLaren were clearly the strongest teams."

"So we need to find a car that has a wide working window and doesn't react so capriciously to the smallest changes. If we can do that halfway decently, we'll automatically be in contention for the World Championship again thanks to the Max Verstappen Factor."

Talking about the latest call to fire Sergio Perez and replace him with Liam Lawson, Marko felt the change was due to the Mexican's driving style.

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Helmut Marko on why Red Bull needed a new teammate for Max Verstappen

Appreciating the role Sergio Perez played in Max Verstappen's title campaign in 2021, Helmut Marko said (via kleinezeitung):

"He has experienced a certain drop in performance, although the overall balance over the years has been positive. In 2021, he contributed a lot to Max Verstappen's first world championship title, winning a total of five Grands Prix and being vice world champion. But now something between this car and his driving style no longer fits."

Verstappen will team up with Liam Lawson in 2025 as the young Kiwi gets an opportunity to race alongside the Dutch driver. It will be interesting to see how he fares compared to the four-time world champion.