Max Verstappen Still Taking the Season One Race At a Time As ‘Surprising’ Title Challenge Ramps Up
Max Verstappen’s chances of stealing the 2025 F1 World Championship from Oscar Piastri or Lando Norris took another step closer to becoming a reality after last weekend’s U.S. Grand Prix. Victory in both the sprint and the main event allowed the Red Bull Racing driver to trim what just a few weeks ago was a 104-point deficit to Piastri to 40 points. In 2007, Kimi Raikkonen clawed back 17 “old” points—roughly equivalent to 40 under the current scoring system—in just two races, pipping then-McLaren teammates Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton. Verstappen has five GPs, and two sprints, to get the job done.
A couple of races ago, the Dutchman stressed that he can take it a weekend at a time, and has nothing to lose. With the gap closing and victory becoming more realistic, does that mean he now has something to lose, and perhaps can’t take that extra risk in qualifying or at Turn One?
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Not in his view. “I think it’s still the same,” Verstappen said when Road & Track put the question to him in Mexico on Thursday. “I mean, worst case, I finish P3, right? So nothing really changes. I just want to try and win races ’til the end of the season.”
He knows there’s no margin for error in the coming weeks: “We are on a good run, and we also know as a team that it needs to be perfect to the end, to have a chance. So if it works, then yeah, great, unbelievable comeback. If it doesn’t work, you just continue.”
Mark Sutton – Formula 1 – Getty Images
From the outside, Verstappen appears to be thriving in the unaccustomed role of underdog, chasing down the McLaren advantage. It’s not like 2022 and 2023 when he was utterly dominant, or 2024 when he built up a big lead then had to hang on as McLaren started to win regularly. However, he doesn’t quite see it that way, and insists his approach is always the same.
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“Of course, naturally, you want to win the championship. And of course, I’ve won championships very late, very early,” he said. “Now this one, of course, is very different, because I think for most of the season, it was a lot harder for us. And to be honest with you, to still be in this fight is very surprising. But I take it.”
“For me, it’s just positive pressure. I’m loving what I’m doing. If the car is competitive, much better to be racing in it than when it’s not.”
There’s no great mystery in terms of the turnaround in Red Bull’s form; the team worked away and eventually unlocked the potential that was in a car that, like others of the current generation, was previously proving hard to optimize. The resurgence began in Monza, where a major floor upgrade—basically, the result of a massive wake-up call after the team struggled at the 2024 Italian GP—paid off handsomely. And it continued to do so even at other venues, even if high-speed Monza was the catalyst.
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“We tried a lot of things, and a lot of them didn’t work,” admitted Verstappen. “I do think it’s just a combination of a lot of things—upgrades on the car that made it possible to run the car in a different configuration. And these cars are super-sensitive, right? So if you’re sliding a bit less, the tires also work a bit better, and then that gives you also better race pace.”
All those improvements that unlocked the pace helped bring out the best in the driver. “It’s a lot of things that just came together that suddenly unlocked quite a bit more pace within the car, and naturally also gives me more confidence. And it allowed us also to set up the car, I would say, a little bit more aggressive, a bit more on the nose, without losing the rear, for example. And that’s exactly what you would you want.”
Mark Sutton – Formula 1 – Getty Images
Verstappen has no idea how the form of the car will play out over the last five weekends of this season, and says 2024 form is not a reliable guide. “The car is quite different now for us,” he said. “Also some other cars have been performing quite different to last year. So it’s almost impossible to know how competitive we are going to be, or other teams are going to be.”
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Even a talent like Verstappen needs a good car to get the job done. However, Red Bull motorsport boss Helmut Marko has made an intriguing suggestion: the man himself benefited from the positive distraction of his Nurburgring GT3 adventures, which happened just as he was struggling with the F1 car. Marko believes a combination of having fun with his side project and returning to a quicker Red Bull brought the best out of Verstappen, although the driver plays down that suggestion.
“Of course, it’s more enjoyable coming to the race weekends like this than knowing that you don’t have a chance to win,” he said. “But I know for myself that when I sit in the car, I will always try to maximize everything that I have, and I give it everything.”
Regarding the positive influence of the GT3 project, he said it had been in the works for a while, so its impact on his day job wasn’t exactly unexpected. “That was the first opportunity, but I’ve been doing this also offline, a lot, even racing during F1 weekends online. So there’s nothing really that that has changed in terms of how professionally I approach my race weekend.”
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Perhaps the most intriguing aspect of the title battle is that Verstappen is up against two McLaren drivers who are also busy fighting each other in what has at times been a tense atmosphere. Logic suggests the Woking team’s internal struggle could help Max, but he’s not too bothered by that possibility.
“That’s not really my problem, is it?” he said. “As a team, they decide what they want to do right with the rules, I just focus on my own performances. And for me, what is the most important is that we have a competitive car. So we have a competitive car and a chance to beat them, we will.”
Verstappen and Lando Norris on the podium at the 2025 U.S. Grand Prix. NurPhoto – Getty Images
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