Verstappen: At the moment we don’t have a winning car

The defending Formula 1 Champion is under pressure from McLaren's Lando Norris who beat him at his home race at Zandvoort last weekend, and by quite a margin.

Now, with F1 moving to Monza this weekend, Verstappen was facing questions about his chances of winning again, and whether he had the car under him to do so, he responded, quoted by F1's Official Website: "At the moment we don’t, but there are a lot of different tracks coming up where hopefully we can do better.

"I don’t expect the weekends to be all the time like Zandvoort," he pointed out. "I think for us it was just not a great weekend, we were just always a bit too slow and now it’s up to us to find a better balance in the car to be more competitive.

"It’s [a] more difficult [period] than we would’ve liked, that’s for sure, but everyone is trying to stick together and improve it. We’re working very hard to find more performance again.

"A tough weekend is still P2, so that’s not too bad," the Red Bull ace said of his tough home race, "but we want more, we want to win, or at least challenge for a win. In Zandvoort that was definitely not the case, but I’m confident that we can be more competitive than what we showed."

With McLaren now having the fastest car on the F1 grid, if the MCL38's Zandvoort speed is anything to go by, the Norris will have a chance to keep the pressure on Verstappen until the rest of the season.

But the triple F1 Champion is focusing on what he can do, he said: "It [Norris dominance] might happen, but it’s not in my control.

"I only try to control the things that are in my control. That, I cannot control, so you shouldn’t waste any energy on that because it’s not in my hands.

"I’ll just try to improve the situation with myself and the car and just try to get a better balance. If we get a better balance, it will help everything and the performance of the car naturally," Verstappen concluded.

Verstappen has not won a race since the 2024 Spanish Grand Prix, and has a 70-point gap over Norris in the 2024 F1 Championship.