Verstappen was prepared to lose his dominance

Although he was surprised by the competitive nature of the 2024 F1 season, three-time world champion Max Verstappen insists that hw was prepared to lose his dominance at some point.

Red Bull enjoyed a strong start to its 2024 F1 title defence, winning four of the opening five rounds. It looked like that the Milton Keynes-based outfit would dominate the third year of the current era of ground-effect cars until McLaren and Ferrari achieved a sudden lift in performance.

The Scuderia won in Australia and then in Monaco while the British squad took the victory in Miami. Following a successful upgrade in Monaco, Mercedes also started to claw its way back to the sharp end of the field. So impressive was the step the Brackley-headquartered outfit took that it won three of the last four races.

At the last race before the summer break in Belgium, Verstappen started from P11 as he served a ten-place grid penalty for exceeding his power unit allocation. Although he won the Belgian Grand Prix in 2022 and 2023 from lower grid positions, he was unable to finish higher than fifth.

Reflecting on the current situation, Verstappen said that he was aware of a potential change in the pecking order, but he was taken aback that rivals teams managed to close the gap to Red Bull so quickly.

"Like we had last year, I mean, it's very rare that you have this kind of season. So I was always prepared for it. I just didn't think that it would happen so quickly, to have that kind of swing in performance compared to the other teams."

"Personally, I think no one would have thought that. But that's beautiful. I mean, people always think, ‘Oh, it's going to be boring, blah, blah, blah’. And a season like this comes along."

The three-time world champion has acknowledged that he can accept that fans would like to see a close fight at the sharp end of the field.

"I would have liked to have won a little bit more lately. But, I mean, to be honest, I always feel like I'm in competition with myself anyway. So that doesn't matter if you're like 20, 30 seconds ahead or you're fighting.

"Of course, the fans always like to see the closer battles. But just personally, of course, you always try to extract the maximum out of it. If that's now fighting with other teams or not, right? You always try to push to the limit," concluded Verstappen.