Max Verstappen believes "90 per cent" of the F1 grid could win the Drivers' Championship if they had Lewis Hamilton's car. Mercedes have dominated motorsport's premier tournament for the last seven years. The Brit have already wrapped up the 2020 Constructors' Championship. Moreover, Hamilton can win his seventh world title this weekend at the Turkish Grand Prix which would equal Michael Schumacher's record. The 35-year-old needs to finish ahead of team-mate Valtteri Bottas to secure the Championship with three races to spare. “No, I’m not frustrated about that,” the Dutchman told F1's official magazine. “I have a lot of respect for what they’ve achieved. I’m not frustrated about Lewis in a Mercedes car. To be honest, 90 percent of the field could win in that car. "Nothing against Lewis, he’s a great driver, but the car is so dominant. OK, maybe others wouldn’t be as dominant as Lewis is, but you accept the situation you are in and you just try to make the best of it. I’m not frustrated, I’m more focused on what can we do to try and beat them.” Verstappen feels there is still a huge gap for his team to close if they want to challenge for silverware. “There are quite a few things at the moment,” he explained. “First of all we are always too slow at the beginning [of the season], so we need to make sure we have a car that hits the ground running and is a lot more competitive. “How to do that? Clearly we haven’t found it, so we need to change our approach. We need to find a different way of working. In terms of operations, we are good: we have really good pitstops, we’re good at strategy. I don’t think there are a lot of things that go wrong there. "Besides that, clearly this year we were lacking in power. There are quite a few things we have to work on to be able to fight them.” Will 2021 be the year Red Bull are able to take the fight to Mercedes? “Personally I don’t think we will [contend in 2021] because of all the limitations we have at the moment in terms of what you can develop on the car," Verstappen conceded. "Maybe some other people in the team will say something different. From my side I’m just realistic, I don’t think we can. So next year will be another tough one. Hopefully we’ll be a bit better but it will still be difficult to beat the Mercedes.”
Source: Express