Max Verstappen makes simple Red Bull demand to combat 'quite extraordinary' McLaren

Max Verstappen fears "a lot needs to happen" if he is to become an F1 title contender this season despite his solid performance over the Canadian Grand Prix weekend.

Red Bull driver Verstappen started and finished second behind Mercedes' George Russell at the Circuit Gilles Villeneuve to close the gap on the championship leader, Oscar Piastri, to 43 points after the Australian finished fourth.

It was a rare off-weekend for McLaren in terms of its performance this season, compounded by Lando Norris running into the back of Piastri with four laps remaining, resulting in retirement and slipping 22 points adrift of his team-mate, and only 21 points ahead of Verstappen.

Verstappen knows there is only way for he and Red Bull to combat the threat of the McLaren duo.

Speaking to the media, including RacingNews365, Verstappen said: "We need to start winning races more often. And how do we do that? By being more competitive.

"Now, this was a good weekend, but again, not competitive enough. We have our moments where, maybe, we can win here or there, but we just need to make the car faster. Then we make it a lot easier for ourselves.

"We're working hard on it with the team. Of course, bits are coming, but is it going to be enough? I don't know. It's the small margins in this world that can give you better results every single weekend.

"But what I think so far, what McLaren has shown this whole season, is quite extraordinary and difficult to beat.

"So now, okay, one weekend is not as good, but they are still, by far, the favourites, and that's not going to be something that is easily beaten. But for the coming races, we really want to try and improve our car."

Verstappen expresses season wish

The foundation stones for Verstappen's display in Canada were laid on Friday in practice. For the majority of this season, Friday has proven problematic for the Dutch driver with his RB21.

Across various Friday sessions before Canada, Verstappen has often bemoaned various aspects of the car and been left with work to do overnight to get it into a good performance window for qualifying on Saturday.

In Montreal, Verstappen was quickest in first practice, the first time he has topped any practice timesheet this year. Although slightly off the pace in FP2, he was far from concerned, as has previously been the case at other grands prix.

Verstappen recognises he now needs consistent starts to his weekends to pose more of a threat, albeit reiterating the performance of the car overall needs to be improved.

"I hope we can start every weekend like this in terms of how I feel with the car, but we do need more performance to be quick everywhere," he said.

"McLaren wasn't as strong as normal, and, of course, we benefited a little bit. But going to all the other tracks now coming up, we definitely need more performance to even be close to them.

"It was a good weekend for us, but we need a lot more to fight with them for the whole season."