Lando Norris has proved Verstappen’s closest rival in recent races as McLaren emerges as a genuine contender for race wins.

It sits third in the constructors’ championship as the season approaches its halfway point but has outscored Red Bull Racing across the most recent six events.

The gap between the two operations now sits at 87 points having been 115 points following the Miami Grand Prix – a race won by Norris.

“McLaren, at the moment, they’re just very solid,” opined Verstappen, who heads the drivers’ championship from Norris by 81 points.

“They’re good everywhere, every single track, kind of.

“And also, I think you could see in Barcelona, they were very good on their tyres.

“They could just push more on them compared to, I think, everyone else on the grid without actually degging off that much at the end of stints.

“Even the last stint, my last few laps were quite a struggle, where Lando was definitely catching up a lot.”

Tyre management has proved a strength of the MCL38, with Norris closing on Verstappen in the final stint in Austria, too.

That created a tense battle for the lead that was ultimately resolved by contact between the pair, eliminating the McLaren from the race.

Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner sees the McLaren threat differently, and attributes the late charge from Norris in Austria to a tyre offset.

“I think that was tyre offset, because first stint, second stint, we were absolutely fine, particularly at the end of the stint,” he reasoned.

“So that [slow stop] then puts Lando in the slipstream. He went off, he got a black and white flag.

“He then went up the inside of Max and went off. So it was a fourth strike that went to the stewards and the likelihood was he was going to get a penalty.

“And I think he knew that. Then the incident at Turn 3, to me, when I looked at the replay, it looks like six of one or half a dozen of the other, both racing hard.”

Following the clash with Norris, Verstappen rejoined on soft tyres for the remaining laps, where he displayed strong pace.

“He did four laps on a soft tyre that would have been good enough for pole yesterday,” Horner noted.

“He won the Sprint race convincingly, had an eight-second lead before we had a problem with the pit stop.

“I thought we had them covered this weekend.”

Verstappen sees the rising threat posed by McLaren rather more seriously as the weaknesses of the Red Bull are highlighted.

“These are things that we have to do better,” he noted of the tyre degradation deficit he has to the papaya machine.

“Plus, of course, our known issues with the kerbs and bumps, low speed, basically.

“Those are things that we try to understand better also for next year.”