Max Verstappen has firmly rejected any suggestion that his motivation is being effected by Mercedes’ dominance in 2020.
This year it was hoped the Dutchman and his Red Bull team would finally be able to put together a championship bid to try and end the reign of Lewis Hamilton and the German manufacturer.
Instead, Verstappen has only claimed a solitary win in the second race at Silverstone and sits 47 points behind Hamilton after just seven races.
But the 22-year-old is adamant the continued disappointment of being unable to regularly challenge the Briton is not impacting his mentality.
“I don’t understand why people think you wouldn’t be motivated,” he said on Thursday at Monza.
“You have one of the best jobs in the world, you’re driving super-fast cars and I’m driving third or second, and I had one win. So I find it incredible that people think you wouldn’t be motivated.
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“It’s really stupid. I love what I’m doing. Every weekend I come here and I love driving the car, and I want to of course try to challenge them, but if it’s not possible I settle for the best result possible in the car I have, and then I’m still enjoying it.”
While it does appear more and more likely that Hamilton is strolling to seventh world title, matching Michael Schumacher, Red Bull boss Christian Horner still believes Verstappen can’t be counted out for now.
“I think we’ve been the outside bet since the Austrian Grand Prix, the first one,” he was quoted by Motorsport Week.
“And, you know, we continue to have an outside chance in this championship.
“It’s not quite at the halfway point even yet. So it’s a weird old year and things can change but it’s going to have to be quite a change obviously from what we’ve seen so far.
“I mean they’ve [Mercedes] been extremely dominant [in Belgium], but that’s Max’s sixth consecutive podium, he is still second in the Drivers’ Championship.
“It’s a very strong performance on that side we just need to find some more performance to hopefully take the fight to them.”
Asked if he agreed with his boss, Max replied: “Well, we won’t give up, but I’m very realistic that at the moment we’re just too slow. We need luck to win races and actually gain some points back.
“Like at the moment it looks like we’re still in a championship fight, but every race I’m more or less losing seven points, so at one point it will, of course, be very big the gap. Like I said, just being realistic, I think it’s good.
“But every single weekend I try to of course get the best out of it. I mean, it’s not like I’m down or anything, but be realistic. I think in Spa again, we were half a second slower a lap, compared to them, so you can’t really fight them at the moment.”
