Toto Wolff makes thinly-veiled Red Bull dig as F1 fight heats up after Max Verstappen win | F1 | Sport
Toto Wolff made a dig at Red Bull after watching Max Verstappen win the Las Vegas Grand Prix, describing the Milton Keynes squad as ‘the one-car team’. Mercedes are locked into a tense Constructors’ Championship fight with their long-time rivals heading into the penultimate round of the 2025 season.
Both George Russell and Kimi Antonelli finished inside the top five in Sin City, with the Italian rookie recovering from 17th in qualifying. Yet still, with Verstappen taking to the top step of the podium, the gap in the Constructors’ Championship stands at 32 points. With a sprint race coming up in Qatar, Red Bull are not yet out of the hunt.
This is despite the miserable form of Yuki Tsunoda, who laboured to a 14th-place finish on Sunday after Red Bull opted to start him from the pit lane following a P19 qualifying result. The Japanese racer has scored points on just six occasions in the Grand Prix this season, putting the team’s Constructors’ Championship hopes firmly on Verstappen’s shoulders.
Speaking to Sky Sports F1, Wolff poked fun at Red Bull’s struggles with the second car. With a smirk, he said: “Well, I mean, we lost some points against the one-car team – 25, I think it is – so that’s by far not enough to say ‘that is easy’. We just need to go to Qatar and Abu Dhabi and do our best.”
According to Red Bull chief Laurent Mekies, Tsunoda’s race was effectively written off following on from qualifying on Saturday. The team confessed to making a tyre pressure mistake after the 25-year-old was eliminated in Q1, and this set him up for failure in the Grand Prix.
“I think for Yuki, we paid the price of what happened yesterday, that’s what it is,” Mekies declared. “We take it race by race; that’s the reality. We want to nail every weekend as much as we can. Today we made it, this weekend, that’s what matters. A win is a win.
“We leave this race with a win, and we will reset, and we’ll look at Qatar with that very same objective – extract everything. The points are a consequence; we don’t do anything thinking about the points.”
As for the Drivers’ Championship, Verstappen still harbours dreams of becoming a five-time world champion in 2025, although the Dutchman will need to be flawless over the coming races to take the fight to Lando Norris. The McLaren star clinched his fifth straight podium finish to move 30 points clear of team-mate Oscar Piastri.
