Red Bull has gone from being the hunted to the hunter

From being the dominant driver for just over two seasons, the three-time Formula 1 champion now finds himself desperately aching to see the chequered flag on the longest season in the sport's history as his rivals bear down upon him.

Ahead of this weekend's Singapore Grand Prix, McLaren's Lando Norris has closed the gap to 59 points, with Ferrari's Charles Leclerc 78 adrift, and Oscar Piastri in the other McLaren now 91 behind after his win in Azerbaijan on Sunday.

With 206 points on the table, you would still favour Verstappen to join Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel in winning his fourth title at some stage this year, but the tension is slowly ramping up.

For the first time since the 2022 Spanish Grand Prix, after a run of 55 races and a span of 847 days, Red Bull is no longer out front in the constructors' championship. It has gone from so long being the hunted to now the hunter as it trails McLaren by 20 points.

The RB20 has become "a bit of a diva,” a phrase advisor Helmut Marko borrowed from fellow Austrian and Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff who used the term to describe his team's 2017 car given the variances in its performance that year.

On this occasion, the balance has become disconnected between front and rear, a trait that team boss Christian Horner claimed initially materialised in last year's United States Grand Prix before becoming more of an issue following the application of an upgrade for this year's race in Miami.

By that stage, Verstappen had won four of the first five races and seemed set on an inevitable course towards another date with destiny and his name being mentioned in the same breath as Prost and Vettel.

As Red Bull has attempted to make corrections, it has only exacerbated the problems, as heard over the radio in Hungary and Verstappen's surprisingly frank exchanges with long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase. That storm was weathered given the overall bonhomie of their relationship.

Verstappen's ire, however, was raised further following the car's performance in the recent Italian Grand Prix after which he described it as "a monster,” his incredulity inflamed by the speed at which Red Bull had fallen from its dominant position to one where it could inconceivably finish third in the constructors' standings with Ferrari only 31 points adrift.

In Azerbaijan, Verstappen was two laps away from his worst finishing position for exactly two years, with seventh looming only to unfortunately be spared such a statistic by team-mate Sergio Pérez's penultimate lap crash with Ferrari's Carlos Sainz, taking fifth at the flag.

Verstappen started that race from sixth on the grid, two places behind Pérez, the first time he had been out-qualified by the Mexican for 33 races following a set-up error by the team, underlining the pressure it is under to make the necessary corrections with the car. 

"I had the connection with the car," said Verstappen after the race, "but then unfortunately, with the changes that we made [after qualifying] we lost it again."

Verstappen was virtually anonymous in the race, bar complaining about his "brakes not working,” and that there was "no rear grip,” a consequence of being mired behind other cars and wedded to a one-stop strategy, along with the remainder of the field.

The Dutchman did make a second stop late on – when the gap behind was sufficient – in a bid to take the fastest lap point from Norris, only for Pérez's crash to wreck that plan. When things are not going for you they really do bite.

To rub salt into Verstappen's wounds that day, he finished behind Norris despite his friend starting from 15^th on the grid, following an unfortunate situation with yellow flags late in the first part of qualifying that forced him to back off and prevent him from claiming a place in Q1.

Piastri's victory underlined just how much worse it could have been for Verstappen if Norris had been towards the front of the grid. Instead, he only lost three points. Even so, to finish behind after starting nine places ahead will have hurt.

Jacques Villeneuve, the often-outspoken 1997 F1 champion, noted in his post-race punditry for Sky Sports F1 that Verstappen was now sounding "very downbeat," that "he's not even feisty in the race". 

"He doesn't fight that hard," assessed Villeneuve. "Even on the radio we barely hear him, so something has changed. It's as if he knows he hasn't won [for a while], he knows it [the car] is not driving like he wants.

"Now his team-mate was a lot quicker than him. That's a very strange situation."

Next up is Singapore, the thorn in the side of Red Bull's domination last year as it was the only race of the 22 the team failed to win. The Marina Bay Street Circuit proved to be such an Achilles heel that Verstappen and Pérez failed to even qualify for Q3.

Verstappen is not expecting miracles this time around, indicating the gaps to the trio of drivers behind him will again be reduced coming out of the weekend when there will be six grands prix and three sprints remaining.

There is a glimmer of hope for Verstappen in that he at least felt in a better place with the car in Friday practice in Baku before those seemingly disastrous changes were applied.

"From now on we can be in the fight constantly if we keep improving the car a little bit after our findings in Monza," Verstappen said, with regard to the deficiencies that were found after its woeful showing around 'the Temple of Speed'.

"If we do a better job ourselves then they [his rivals] need to have a perfect end to the year."

A four-week gap then follows the Singapore Grand Prix, during which time Red Bull will have the opportunity to apply its apparent knowledge of the problem, although it faces a risk in applying additional upgrades given the Austin weekend incorporates one of those sprints, meaning only one practice session to draw conclusions.

It may feel, though, that with that race the start of a triple-header that also incorporates Mexico and Brazil, it will have no choice.

These are testing times for Red Bull and Verstappen. As Horner put it: "We're pushing hard. We're now not defending, we're chasing, so it changes the dynamic again, and we're just going to throw everything at it."

Images courtesy of Motorsport Images.