Highlights
Series
Explore
This article first appeared in GP Racing magazine.
Six months ago - in what now seems like a different world, almost a different life - Max Verstappen and Christian Horner sat in Red Bull's trendy UK headquarters in London's Covent Garden and talked up their chances for the new season.
Horner described Red Bull being "in a position to challenge Mercedes"; Verstappen said: "We really want to mount a challenge to Mercedes and I think we can do that." Now, in a championship and world turned upside down by coronavirus, Red Bull's prospects look very different.
There had been eight grands prix this year at the time of writing, after the Italian Grand Prix. Mercedes had won six of them, Lewis Hamilton five. Leaving aside Monza - madcap and influenced by safety car and red flag and won by Pierre Gasly for Red Bull's junior team - Verstappen had been the only driver to pose even the vaguest sort of challenge to Mercedes. And he had won a race. It was done, as Horner points out, "on merit".
