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Damon Hill predicts whether he thinks Red Bull can still win the Constructors’ Championship

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Red Bull has fallen behind McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship after being outscored at the Azerbaijan Grand Prix.

The team went into the weekend with an eight-point lead over McLaren, but a poor result from Max Verstappen coupled with a late crash from Sergio Perez with Carlos Sainz caused Red Bull to drop behind.

Heading into the final seven races Red Bull must now overturn a 20-point deficit if they want to defend their Constructors’ crown, but Helmut Marko has already admitted this might be out of reach given the problems they face with the RB20.

Lando Norris is already within 59 points of Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship and even though the Constructors’ is worth millions in prize money, teams tend to focus on the former due to the commerical exposure.

Former F1 driver and 1996 world champion Damon Hill has made his prediction when speaking on the Sky Sports F1 podcast, on how he sees things panning out in the last seven races as Red Bull attempts to rectify its problems.

Damon Hill predicts Ferrari will overtake Red Bull

With Charles Leclerc’s win at Monza and strong finish at Baku, Ferrari has now moved to within 31 points of Red Bull in the Constructors’ battle and could overtake them at their current rate.

Christian Horner admitted at the Italian GP that Red Bull now has the fourth quickest car, and if Verstappen continues to finish outside of the top three they could face being overtaken by Ferrari according to Hill.

“They are having to manage the decline because they need to finish at the end of the championship with just one point. It looks like it’s going to be very, very close at the rate at which Ferrari and McLaren are catching them. So they’re already overtaking them in the constructors,” said Hill.

“Red Bull will be thinking ‘Well, we probably lost the constructors championship’ and I don’t see how they, especially with Checo’s continued bad fortune, I don’t see how they’re going to realistically look at bags of points going forward compared to Ferrari and McLaren.”

F1 Grand Prix of Azerbaijan - Final Practice
Photo by Clive Mason/Getty Images

Red Bull suffers ‘massive setback’ before Singapore

The next circuit is Singapore which is the only race Red Bull failed to win out of 22 Grands Prix last season, owing to the circuit’s 90-degree corners.

Red Bull is expected to fare a similar weekend this year, although Perez’s performance at Baku gave them a glimmer of hope that it might not be as bad.

However, Marko warned the team has potentially suffered a setback after to Perez’s collision with Sainz and could be forced to scrap a planned ‘test period’ for their revised floor because they do not have any spares.

Red Bull introduced a minor floor upgrade for the race in Baku, but with the damage from the crash it would force Perez onto an older-spec model for Singapore which would impact the team’s data-gathering.