Max Verstappen thinks it will take a “small miracle” for Red Bull to win in Singapore this weekend.
With Red Bull enduring ongoing balance problems with its RB20 car, the world championship leader has been without a victory since the Spanish Grand Prix in June.
As the squad returns to the Marina Bay circuit – the only venue on the calendar Verstappen has not won at in his Formula 1 career – a year on from its 2024 struggles, it is not expecting the situation to be dramatically different this time out.
Asked what it would take to turn the tide on title rivals McLaren and Ferrari and deliver a win, Verstappen said: “A small miracle, yes.
“I'm not going to shout that I expect to win here, because clearly that's not the case after the last few years here.
“Q3 should definitely be possible this time, but I'm certainly not going to say that I'm going to put the car on pole here.”
Red Bull knows that Singapore will be a struggle because its 2024 F1 challenger does not perform well on bumpy tracks and over kerbs.
And while the team feels that it has made improvements, helped in part by a 2022 car test that Verstappen performed at Imola prior to the Spanish GP, it does not yet have a full solution for its weakness.
“It can't magically improve all of a sudden,” added the Dutchman. “We are just limited by how the car behaves over the bumps and the kerbstones.”
But despite knowing it is unlikely to be a stellar weekend, Verstappen feels it should be better than last year: “I do think we could have done a better job with the set-up as well last year. That's something you try to learn from.”
Red Bull is trying to work on wider improvements to its 2025 F1 car to try to get a permanent cure for its problems with bumps – but Verstappen admits that improvements in this area have the added risk of reducing other strengths of its package.
“That's always the big question of course, whether that can be done without touching the good aspects of the car,” he said.
“But I think it will help overall if we get a bit better over the bumps and kerbstones. So it will help everywhere if we can make the car a bit calmer.”
