Jos Verstappen admits he and son Max and “very concerned” with how Red Bull are performing at the moment, and believes the team has stagnated in their development while the likes of Ferrari have improved.
Before the summer break, Red Bull were flying, as Verstappen claimed victories in Austria and Germany. However, since the season recommenced it has been all about Ferrari, with Charles Leclerc collecting two victories in Spa and Monza and Sebastian Vettel winning in Singapore.
Both Verstappen and team-mate Alexander Albon received new engines at the Russian Grand Prix on Sunday, and although they put in superb performances to finish fourth and fifth, they were significantly off the pace in the end as Lewis Hamilton won.
"We should have been closer, but that is more difficult than we thought," Jos explained to Ziggo Sport's Peptalk.
"It is very frustrating. In the last races before the summer break it went really well, but after the summer break we did not progress while the other teams did.
"Max cannot change that, we depend on the team, the car is a bit behind, the engine is a bit behind, more work has to be done on this combination if we want to challenge for the world title next year.
“We are very concerned if there will be any improvement in the short term, we will talk to the team to see what can be done.
"We depend on the equipment we get and at the moment it is not good enough."
In qualifying in Russia, Verstappen was half-a-second slower than the front-runners and finished 13 seconds adrift of Hamilton in the race proper on Sunday after starting lower down the grid. Verstappen Sr. therefore isn't expecting miracles in the next race in Japan.
"Looking at the last couple of races it seems that we will be half a second short in Japan,” he added.
"Of course we will try everything to close the gap, but half a second you cannot catch up in two weeks’ time.
"The expectation was to close the gap to the competition, but at the moment it does not look like it. We have to work hard to close the gap, otherwise next year will be lost too."
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