Helmut Marko takes a cheeky dig at McLaren after F1 US GP Sprint

Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko has taken a cheeky dig at the Woking-based McLaren F1 team after the 2025 US GP Sprint. Both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri secured an unfortunate DNF (lap 1 crash), while Max Verstappen went on to amass a strong win.

For the majority of the ongoing season, the fight for the drivers' championship was a two-way brawl between the papaya drivers. However, since the last few races, Red Bull has been able to extract performance out of the RB21, and this has helped Max Verstappen turn the two-way title fight into a three-way tussle.

Following yesterday's US GP Sprint race, Verstappen (P3) has further cut the deficit to Oscar Piastri by eight points (drivers' championship leader), and the former is now sitting on 281 points in comparison to Piastri's 336. Lando Norris is in second place, having amassed 314 points.

Following the end of yesterday's Sprint race, Helmut Marko took the time to dwell on it and even took a slight shot at McLaren:

"We have to keep pushing and make McLaren nervous, which obviously seems to work."

RBR Daily

@RBR_Daily

Helmut Marko: "We have to keep pushing and make McLaren nervous, which obviously seems to work." [@verstappenews]

Helmut Marko's team, barring a few setbacks this year, has been the best-performing outfit under the ongoing ground-effect era (2022 - 2025). This has helped Max Verstappen amass four consecutive world championships.

With six Grand Prix events remaining on the race calendar alongside an in-form Verstappen, the task is going to be tricky for McLaren in the drivers' championship. In the upcoming US GP, the reigning world champion will start the race from pole position.

Helmut Marko feels Max Verstappen lost 'little bit of interest' in 2025

F1 Grand Prix Of Singapore - Practice - Source: Getty

While Helmut Marko has taken a cheeky dig at McLaren, he has also recently talked about his team's star driver, Max Verstappen. In line with this, the Austrian has made it known that Verstappen lost a 'little bit of interest' when the RB21 was not competitive.

Via an interaction with Sky Sports, Marko has added the following:

"Max at one stage when we were not competitive, I would say he lost a little bit of interest. He was more interested in GT racing, so to keep him in a good mood, I was talking about Nürburgring and things like that."

The 82-year-old, while shedding light on Verstappen's title prospects, added:

"It’s too early to say if he’s back in the title battle, but this weekend looks promising."

In the upcoming 2025 US GP, Verstappen will kick things off from P1 (mentioned earlier), while Lando Norris will start alongside him from P2. Championship leader Oscar Piastri is slated to kick off his outing from P6 after a tough qualifying.

Keeping in view the chaos that ensued in the Sprint race, it will be important for Helmut Marko and his team to get a clean getaway with Verstappen. The Dutchman has a strong chance to further cut down the points deficit in the drivers' championship.