Marko: We don’t have to win every race

Verstappen leads the F1 drivers' championship standings by 93 points over Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez and 98 over third-placed Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc; the Dutchman has nine wins to his name out of the 14 races thus far this season.

Red Bull are heading to their first F1 constructors' title since 2013, they lead Ferrari by 118 points in the constructors' race ahead of this weekend's Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort. Meanwhile, Mercedes are the current reigning F1 Champions.

With such a points cushion on both title fronts, no surprise Marko is confident that they do not need to maximise every remaining race: "The good thing is we don’t have to win every race.

"If we see we can’t win, okay, we go for points. There are still eight races to go. I believe we have to win two or three more to be safe in the championship," Marko told F1i.

Before the summer break Verstappen's performances stepped up a notch to dominant levels, winning the Hungarian Grand Prix from tenth on the grid was impressive stuff.

Fast forward almost a month and to take the Red Bull from 14th on the grid to victory was simply astounding and could not come at a better time, five days before the action starts on Friday at the seaside venue.

Otherworldly was the performance, as just about everyone was saying after the Spa demolition job he did on his rivals last Sunday. Begging the question: what does Max have for his home crowd this weekend, performing for them for the first time as a F1 World Champion?

On track, Marko predicts: "At Zandvoort, you have to qualify very well, because overtaking is very difficult and you don’t know what the weather forecast is, if it’s windy, or if there’s sand on the circuit.

"We knew already before the break that we would change the engine here and thought, ‘okay, let’s at least try to get points’ but after the qualifying lap we thought a podium should be possible, but Jos said, ‘No, he will win’."

Red Bull's heyday, was a decade ago with Sebastian Vettel cleaning up for four years in a row - which Marko compared: "We haven’t had dominance like that since then. This time, we have strong opposition.

"With Vettel, we mainly raced against Ferrari, one year against McLaren but here we race against Ferrari and Mercedes, so we are satisfied, and we are really proud."

Last year Verstappen rocked Zandvoort and everyone there that weekend with a sensational pole-to-victory performance on the occasion of the venue's return to the F1 calendar, for the first time since the eighties.