Follow live coverage of today’s Formula One title decider in Abu Dhabi
Max Verstappen arrived at Abu Dhabi’s Yas Marina Circuit with the eyes of the Formula One world squarely on him. He’s seen his face plastered across all the marketing for the season finale, geeing up the year-long rivalry along the path to the championship decider.
That was 2021, when Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton slugged it out right through the year for an all-time great championship fight. They came to Abu Dhabi level on points, setting up a winner-takes-all contest that ended in one of the most controversial moments in F1 history. A race director’s mistake allowed Verstappen to snatch his first world title.
Four years later, Verstappen is back where he won his first title — the moment he believes completed his career. He’s never craved a need to etch himself into F1 history, no matter how many records have fallen to his success. And, unlike 2021, when everything hung on one race, he arrives with nothing left to prove. That could prove decisive against two younger drivers chasing their first titles.
At Thursday’s news conference, he cut a relaxed figure. It still baffles Verstappen that he is in the season finale with a chance of winning a fifth world championship, let alone that he is sandwiched between McLaren drivers Lando Norris, ahead by 12 points, and Oscar Piastri, four further back.
At the end of August, Verstappen was 104 points off the lead and struggling with an underperforming Red Bull car. Verstappen, who has won the last four world championships, gave up hope of defending his crown. His father, Jos, won’t even be in Abu Dhabi — he’s scheduled to compete in a rally in Africa this weekend.
Red Bull’s improvement and McLaren’s mistakes in Las Vegas and Qatar allowed Verstappen to claw his way back. But Verstappen’s composure hasn’t wavered. “Nothing to lose,” was how he described it Thursday, calling the weekend “straightforward.”
“We will just try to have a good weekend,” he said.
Verstappen knows his title hopes are out of his control. McLaren is expected to have a pace advantage over Red Bull in Abu Dhabi, as much as it did in Qatar, due to the track layout, while points leader Norris has traditionally been very strong at the Yas Marina Circuit. He won last year’s race to clinch McLaren the constructors’ title.
The freedom of having “nothing to lose” lifts some of the weight from Verstappen, and it could unleash him on the track even more. Unlike 2021, there isn’t the fear or pressure of a single error undoing an entire season’s worth of work, or seeing that ultimate achievement slip away at the last moment. The polar opposite is true for Norris and, to some extent, Piastri, given both are battling for their first titles.
Max Verstappen chases Lando Norris in the Australian GP (Clive Rose / Getty Images)
Jonathan Wheatley, Sauber’s team principal who was Red Bull’s sporting director for each of Verstappen’s title wins, said it was a “different Max” in 2021 to today.
“It’s not his first rodeo; he has been here before,” he said. “I think he has a coolness and a calm that permeates through the team.”
Verstappen can afford to take more risks, be it pushing that extra bit harder over a single lap in qualifying or when trying to battle the McLaren cars in the race. He was aggressive off the line in Abu Dhabi last year, making contact with Piastri at the first corner, and he attempted a first-lap lunge on Hamilton in the 2021 decider from a long way back. Without feeling the same kind of pressure, Verstappen can go on the attack.
It is not the lack of pressure Verstappen claims to feel that will give him such an edge going into Sunday’s finale, though.
It’s the fact that he’s Max Verstappen, a driver who has built his brand on being incredibly hard to beat. A relentless competitor with just one thing in mind: winning.
As he put it in Qatar, upon seeing the McLaren cars fall into a strategy trap, his thoughts didn’t go to defeat. “I don’t think about losing,” Verstappen said. “That’s not in my head. I think about how to win.”
On the Sports Agents Podcast, Zak Brown, McLaren Racing’s CEO, likened Verstappen to “that guy in a horror movie, that right as you think he’s not coming back, he’s back.” The comparison amused Verstappen. “You can call me Chucky!” he said post-race in Qatar, referring to the cult horror film character.
Andrea Stella, McLaren’s team principal, routinely emphasized through the back end of the season that Verstappen would still be a championship threat, encouraging journalists to write as much in capital letters. “We’re talking about Max Verstappen,” he said in Baku, when Verstappen was still 69 points off the lead.
Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies experienced going up against the Dutchman between 2018 and 2023, when he was Ferrari’s sporting director. The chance to see it close up since taking charge of Red Bull in July has only made his quality all the clearer. Whereas small mistakes have proven costly for Norris and Piastri at points this year, Verstappen has rarely missed a step.
Max Verstappen is 12 points off the lead heading into the finale (Mark Thompson / Getty Images)
“When you are Max’s competitor, having been on the other side of it, there is an element where you know he’ll just never get it wrong,” Mekies told reporters in Qatar. “This puts some pressure on you. He never gets it wrong. He never misses a start; he never misses a Turn 1. He’s going to extract more out of the tires than most people out there.
“Of course it puts pressure.” Mekies said this, combined with Red Bull’s own operational strength, meant it was “naturally there’s a psychological effect” on his competitors.
Verstappen’s all-out pursuit of victory hasn’t always been composed. His approach has bent what is acceptable on the track. Last year in Mexico, Verstappen was penalized twice in one lap for forcing Norris off the track, incidents that contributed to a wholesale review of F1’s racing guidelines by the FIA and drivers.
He has no qualms about getting his elbows out on the track or aggressively asserting his authority. Should Norris and Piastri end up in wheel-to-wheel battles with him Sunday, they know the challenge.
And this has sometimes spilled over to bite Verstappen, to a point that may even prove costly in the title race. In Spain, frustration at the late restart led him to drive into George Russell’s Mercedes after being overtaken, earning a time penalty that dropped him from fifth to 10th and put him on the verge of a race ban. In an interview with F1 TV in Qatar, Verstappen admitted he regretted how he handled the situation, but said he wouldn’t say he had “lost” the championship at that point, pointing to Red Bull’s earlier difficulties in the season. True as that may be, the penalty did cost him nine points.
Handling all of these dynamics will make Sunday a challenge for the McLaren drivers, especially with Verstappen so at ease. But for Red Bull, having such a potent force behind the wheel, one it knows will get the absolute maximum out of the car, is significant going into this showdown.
“It’s just the way he is,” said Mekies. “He is just the way he is. And as Jonathan touched on earlier, it is true that it gives a lot of confidence to the whole team. It is true that it fits so well with the general approach this team has on how you go racing, taking maximum risk, accepting the pain when the risk goes over the edge.”
