Marko explains sudden Red Bull resurgence as Verstappen bounces back

Helmut Marko has praised Red Bull for the three steps that has seemingly rescued Max Verstappen's F1 championship hopes.

After an alarming drop in form, Red Bull has delivered upgrades in the last few races, with the team also believing that a return to conventional tracks as opposed to street circuits would aid Verstappen's title bid against Lando Norris.

In the sprint in Austin, Verstappen won to extend his lead from 52 to 54 points over Norris, and looked set to grab grand prix pole hours later, before Norris pipped him, with the help of an early end to the session after George Russell's crash.

Reflecting on the turnaround, motorsport advisor Marko felt that Verstappen had been masking Red Bull's weaknesses.

"I think we had already lost it a bit [of performance], and the difficulties were only obscured by Max's skills," Marko told Sky Germany.

 You saw that Sergio Perez was falling further and further behind and Max was still able to keep up somewhat and then everything was just critically and impartially analyzed.

"It was realised that the correlation between the wind tunnel and the simulator was wrong."

"After that, we just worked our way through it piece by piece, and the important performance of the car comes from the floor. 

"It was three phases. First in Baku, then in Singapore and now we have the final version here in Austin. That, thank God, has led us to the right direction."

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Horner's reaction

Analysisng Verstappen's run to second, team principal Christian Horner felt that the loss of a chance of pole was simply "one of those things" but that the team should be happy about the result.

"I think we found a bit of time, we've brought the balance closer together, and from the first session, he was competitive," Horner told Viaplay.

"I mean, he was quickest in Q1, quickest in Q2 and I think he would have got the job done in Q3 but it wasn't to be. 

"We've won the sprint race, we're on on the front row for qualifying and so it's been a positive couple of days so far.

"It wasn't his cleanest lap on the first run in Q3, he lost a little bit of time at the penultimate turn, so the second lap was up.

"I think he would have been fine, but it is just one of those things with the yellow flag, so you got to lift but we're still on the front row."