Max Verstappen snapped back at a Sky Sports F1 reporter during a spiky press conference ahead of the Australian Grand Prix. Verstappen enters the new Formula One season as defending champion, after winning the previous four Drivers’ Championship titles.
The Dutchman – along with his fellow Formula One competitors – have descended on Australia for the first race of the campaign. But, unlike previous years, Red Bull aren’t fancied for the top prize, with McLaren – in particular Lando Norris – being tipped to compete in 2025.
Commenting on Sky Sports’ Formula One coverage, reporter Craig Slater recited his interaction with the driver during a press conference. He said: “Max Verstappen, a slightly spiky response to me. Put me in my place, put me away in the news conference today, when I quoted a paraphrase of his words from the Dutch media.
“He said last week ‘we’re not in contention to win here, partly track, McLaren are good.’ He said [in response] ‘you’ve answered your own question.’”
Ted Kravitz, who was appearing alongside Slater on the broadcast, chimed in with: “Well there you go, he didn’t put you away, he confirmed what you said, which was yes it is a very different track from Bahrain so you never know, but McLaren are quite far ahead.
“But for Max to confirm that tells its own story, so the only question really is can Max bring that Red Bull, which clearly isn’t fast enough for their liking yet, into the mix with Ferrari and Mercedes to challenge McLaren.”
It wasn’t all doom and gloom from Verstappen during his pre-race press conference, with the 27-year-old adding: “Positive shape, I guess. I don’t know! I guess we’ll find out more this weekend and after. We’ll try to do our best – there’s not really much more that we can do. Testing is not many days, so we found a few areas we can work on and that’s what we’ll continue to do.”
He concluded: “I know that we are not the quickest at the moment, but again it’s a very long season. If you would have asked that question here last year then at the end of the season again it looked completely different, so a lot of things can always change quite quickly in Formula 1.”
Practice continues on Friday, with qualifying scheduled for Saturday and the main race pencilled in for Sunday.