Marko has ambitious Christmas wish for Verstappen: 'particularly difficult'

After securing the title in Las Vegas, Max Verstappen is now tied with Sebastian Vettel at four (consecutive) world championships a piece, all won with Red Bull Racing. Team advisor Helmut Marko hopes the Dutch driver can add to that tally, but he understands how big of a challenge that may be.

At the Las Vegas Grand Prix, Verstappen became one of the few racers to win four world titles. He is currently tied with Sebastian Vettel and Alain Prost with only Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton ahead of him. With how the 2024 season went, Red Bull knows that next season could be just as hard, if not harder.

On his Christmas wish list, Marko has placed winning at the very top, as he told Kleine Zeitung, stating that he hoped for Red Bull to "win the fifth title with Max. So far, we have managed four titles with Sebastian Vettel and Max, so the fifth seems particularly difficult. We also want to complete our races again with the usual Red Bull efficiency and with ease".

Marko later spoke about his views on the 2025 line-up. After Red Bull agreed to split ways with Sergio Perez, they needed to fill his then vacant seat. Ultimately, they decided to promote Liam Lawson over Yuki Tsunoda. That gave them the opportunity to promote Isack Hadjar from Formula 2. Hadjar will now race alongside Tsunoda in Red Bull's sister team, Racing Bulls. Marko mentioned that he thinks the combination of the two drivers will make the 2025 season interesting for the newly named sister team, Racing Bulls.

This article was written in collaboration with Savannah Lenz.

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