Marko confirms Horner's words in stark forecast for Verstappen's 2025 F1 season

"This is a very dark day," began Helmut Marko, before drawing a painful conclusion on the German branch of Sky Sports.

Max Verstappen's retirement courtesy of Andrea Kim Antonelli appears to signal the end of the world title hopes for the Dutch racer. "The deficit is almost impossible to recover from. So unless something extraordinary happens, we must assume that the world championship is over," stated the Red Bulletvisor.

Marko believes that Verstappen and Red Bull can't rely on McLaren going through a bad spell. "McLaren did have a dip, but that was in Canada because they brought new parts. That's not something you can rely on, so things do not look good," concluded the Austrian on ORF.

During the Austrian Grand Prix, it was again painfully clear how fast McLaren is. "According to our calculations, we could have fought for P3. McLaren was far out of our reach. They were incredibly fast in these warm conditions and what surprised us even more: Piastri was able to stay within one and a half to two seconds of Norris for many laps without his tyres wearing out. That shows how much potential is in that car."

"If you're losing half a second per lap on this circuit, that's alarming. If we project that to Silverstone, it looks like we're one and a half seconds behind," said Marko, fearing for the next race.

Although updates from Red Bull are coming, it seems like a lost cause. "What they do in these high temperatures is something we've wondered about for a while. We have some updates for the next two races, but such performance forces us to write off the championship."

Verstappen is now 61 points behind Oscar Piastri and 46 points on Lando Norris. Although there are still thirteen races left this season, the title is "very difficult," according to Marko.

"It's indeed about both: the time deficit and a gap of more than sixty points. That's almost three victories. It's incredibly difficult to make up for something like that," concluded the Austrian, whose words echoed those of team principal and CEO of the Austrian outfit Christian Horner's as he essentially backtracked on previous remarks that put Veerstappen very much in the title fight.