Red Bull's Helmut Marko throws in the towel on Max Verstappen's title challenge in humbling admission 

Red Bull's Helmut Marko has thrown in the towel on any hopes of a Max Verstappen title challenge, as the Dutch driver suffered a first-lap DNF in the Austrian GP.

The Milton Keynes-based squad had one of the more shocking weekends, where on Saturday the Dutch driver's qualifying lap was compromised by the yellow flag, and then in the race he was punted out by the wayward Mercedes of Kimi Antonelli.

As a result, Max Verstappen was out of the race on the first lap and then looked on as title contenders Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris battled it out for the win. With Norris winning and Piastri coming home in P2, the gap to the championship leader is now 61 points.

What was, however, even more depressing in all of this was the pace that McLaren showed, where the car was in a different league compared to everyone else. For instance, Lando Norris nearly lapped George Russell in his Mercedes at the Austrian GP, demonstrating the car's significant advantage.

Talking about the treacherous weekend that Red Bull had on Sky Sports, Helmut Marko called time on Max Verstappen's title challenge, as he felt that the gap to the top was just too big now. He said,

"This is a very dark day. The deficit is almost impossible to recover from. So unless something extraordinary happens, we must assume that the world championship is over,"

When questioned where he felt Max Verstappen could have finished in the race, Marko felt that a P3 was possible, but the McLarens were just too far ahead. He told ORF,

"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,"

He added,

"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."

Marko on why Red Bull's performance makes his write off Max Verstappen's championship hopes

Even if Max Verstappen had a clean weekend where everything went to plan, the Dutch driver would have been around half a second slower than Lando Norris in qualifying. Even in the race, if the driver had made his way through the first lap carnage, he would not have been able to challenge the laptimes that McLaren was doing.

Marko touched on that when he said that any potential battle for the title was over, as Red Bull's upgrades had just not closed the gap to the front. He said,

"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,"

He added

"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."

Max Verstappen goes away from the F1 Austrian GP more than 60 points behind championship leader Oscar Piastri with a car that's slower than him. It's going to be hard to surmount such a gap and the title run might well and truly be over.

Edited by Charanjot Singh Kohli