When frustration made him better, the champion hopes Max Verstappen, who had already met, took a big blow at the Spanish Grand Prix on Sunday, drove Red Bulls to George Russell's Mercedes. This led to a 10th second free throw, which translated into a single championship point for the tenth and game weekend, where the winning score and 15 points were almost within his grasp.

The result means that the defending champion is now the 49 points in the driver’s rankings by champion leader Oscar Piastri, with the second place being 39 points from Lando Norris. After the match, Verstappen was grilled by the media, training on his suspicious game craft, and he was eager to deflect criticism and talk about anything else, including his reduced chances of championships.

"If there is any (hope), we're going to fight for the championship," he said. "I think it's clear again today."

Before the Spanish Grand Prix, Red Bull had sent some level of speculative hope that stricter front-wing deflection tests could capture McLaren's progress. However, if any, Formula One champion leaders appear to be least affected by technical instructions once the wings are modified to comply with the differences in the “noise” of typical circuit-to-circuit variations.

Piastri and Norris officially became the main force in the qualifying match in De Barcelona Catalunya and won 1-2 on Sunday's match. On the surface, the championship battle has never been more like a two-horse match than it is now.

But despite negative headlines Sunday, his remorseful Instagram posts and the stubborn Red Bull year-round, would be an extremely brave call to rule Verstappen from the title battle.

Why can't Verstappen be calculated

Cycling back to the first match of the European Three Heads in F1, this photo looks very different. In Imola, Verstappen led the race from Piastri in the first corner and had a compelling victory before two McLarens.

The latest news from Miami and Imola helped Verstappen find a happier balance in the car, which in turn allowed him to manage his tires more effectively and outsmart McLaren's space. In Monaco and Spain, it was convincing and less convincing, but revealed the remaining weaknesses of Red Bull on both tours - in Spain, McLaren's strengths were clearly used.

"In a sense, I'm a little surprised that we have such a clear advantage," McLaren's principal Andrea Stella said after his team's team's top qualifying performance on Saturday. "In particular, I hope the Red Bulls will get closer based on some similar circuit characteristics we found in Suzuki or Imora. But, I think in hindsight, looking at the temperatures, this limitation is high, and this limitation is largely associated with the rear axle, which I think is what our car performs."

Managing overheated rear tires has been one of McLaren's core strengths this season. The positive characteristics in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Miami were also evident before Sunday’s Spanish Grand Prix – so much so that competitors began to doubt the tricks beyond the measures allowed in the regulations.

So, perhaps not surprisingly, McLaren has once again shown an advantage over Verstappen on Barcelona's hot and worn track surface. Most importantly, the heat is combined with another key difference between Spain and Imora, which helps further swing McLaren's preference.

"If we want to be more technical, one characteristic of Spain is that the corners are long - unlike Imola, the corners are relatively short," Stella said. "And I think in these long corners, the MCL39 seems to be able to carry on some of the qualities of the predecessor, for example, on Zandvoort, another track with long horns, Lando dominated the weekend.

"So, I think we retained some advantages from an aerodynamic perspective, despite improving the car. And I think, overall, they make sense on this track, and even if the speed range is similar to some other, the length of the corner helps us."

Given McLaren's inherent advantage in Barcelona, ​​how close Verstappen can keep in the game, this could be a surprise. On the surface, Red Bull's three-stop strategy should be slower than the more traditional two-stops of McLaren drivers, but midway through the race, Verstappen was still too close to any comfort on the McLaren pit wall.

"He was quick, and when we were doing mid-size on the second leading mid-size tire, we were pushing, controlling the pace, and his hurry was quick, faster than we hoped," Stella said. "So at some stage we even asked our driver if we should push more, and both gave answers like 'I'm not sure I'm much more pace than that.'

"So, at that stage, we were a little worried that it might be more open than we thought the first game, but thankfully, Verstappen started to drag on a little bit, and Oscar found a lot of pace at the end of the second, which allowed us to pass the Pit Stop sot in a controlled way."

The safety car after the final round of planning pits was stopped exposed the inherent risks of Red Bull's three-stop strategy, but because Verstappen only has one set of hard tires to switch to the pit. He has a set of soft tires left in his distribution, but before the race, they completed three laps in qualifying and four laps before the race, meaning they have little advantage over the eight-lap soft software that already works for Verstappen's cars.

"The safety car is on the (rang) 54, which is probably the worst time in our strategy," Red Bulls principal Christian Horner said on Sunday. "Because you're facing the choice: Are you staying on an eight-wide, heavy soft tire, when you're eaten on restart?"

"It seems like there will be about ten games left. Unfortunately, the only set of tires we have had, which has already been a three-stop strategy, and it's a new set of tough guys. So our feeling is that a new set of hard is softer than a set of eight layers, eight layers, reduced weight, heavier depreciation, so we did what. We stopped."

Next is the now-recorded Verstappen crash in the final six laps of the game. However, so far, the defending champion has the right to gain track characteristics and high temperatures compared to McLarens' competitive ability.

While Verstappen said if the Barcelona performance gap against McLaren would generate a bid for the championship for the rest of the season, which is a bid for four-time champions (not to mention millions of fans around the world), the remaining 15 games will be held on various tours. The upcoming Grand Prix in Canada, Austria and Great Britain should be more suitable for Red Bull and can all be played in cooler conditions, making it a pivotal moment in the Verstappen championship sport.

More importantly, if the fight between McLaren drivers is still competitive, it has the potential to push more opportunities as Norris and Piastri will eventually earn points for each other.

If Verstappen is third in Spain, despite McLaren having two advantage in two of these three games, he can only score three points in three games with the three-header championship. Of course, losing three points per three games isn't enough to win Verstappen, but with competition orders likely to go from track to track, it can prove that he can keep fighting chances with consistent scores.

This is what makes his self-inflicted points loss in Spain. Among the missing title points on Sunday, Verstappen will also walk a rope for the next two games as he is away from the game's banned distance. Two of his giant 11-point free throws will expire at the end of June (his clash with Norris for a year last season), but in Canada and Austria he will be a small offender, which will be a small offense, radiating hopes from off-field games and the challenge he received for the last time.

However, assuming his behavior, Vestapon needs to average 3.27 points per game over the remaining 15 rounds, while Norris scored 2.6 points to crown the champion. Being seen as such is not an insurmountable challenge, but a nearly perfect performance required for the rest of the season.

"Look, I think there's a big gap right now, but there are still a lot of points available," Horner said on Sunday night. "We're not even halfway through the year, so McLaren is in a very strong position, but we never give up."