2025 Formula 1 mid-season driver rankings #3: Max Verstappen

Max Verstappen looks unlikely to succeed in his bid to defend his world championship crown for a fourth consecutive season, having fallen almost 100 points behind leader Oscar Piastri.

This hasn’t been for a lack of effort either on his part or Red Bull’s, which increasingly seems to operate like a one-car team. Replacing his new 2025 team mate after just two rounds for a driver who has scarcely done any better sent a clear message about where their priorities lie.

Verstappen’s relentless drive goes a long way towards justifying their approach, however. He has produced some exceptional drives this year and scored two excellent grand prix wins against the run of play. But he has also blotted his season with a serious lapse in temperament.

On the face of it, Verstappen’s close second to Lando Norris in the season-opener at Melbourne gave the impression a fifth consecutive championship was on the cards. Realistically, the Red Bull driver couldn’t match the McLaren pair for pace as the track dried. In China he could do nothing to avoid finishing behind both orange cars and George Russell’s Mercedes.

A bit of Verstappen magic at Suzuka kept the dream alive. A peach of a qualifying lap put him on pole position by a hundredth of a second, and he kept the McLarens at sword’s length throughout the grand prix for a superb win. But again he came down to earth at the next race, where unusually slow Red Bull pit stops blunted his charge, and it took a last-lap pass on Pierre Gasly to salvage sixth place.

It would be easy to exaggerate the deficiencies of Verstappen’s Red Bull and it bears pointing out that he took pole position for the next two rounds in Jeddah and Miami. He lost the former largely due to a fractionally slower getaway than Oscar Piastri; Verstappen cut the first corner in a bid to stay ahead but the stewards were quick to issue a penalty. In Miami, however, his Red Bull plainly wasn’t quick enough to win, and not only did the McLarens come by him but Verstappen also lost out to George Russell during a Safety Car period.

But when Piastri appeared too preoccupied with Russell at the start of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix, Verstappen pounced, driving around the McLaren at Tamburello and off into a lead he never looked like losing. It was the second time he’d won a race his rivals should have denied him.

A sub-par run in the final round of qualifying in Monaco left Verstappen only fourth, where he inevitably finished. But in Spain, where he matched Russell’s qualifying time to within a thousandth of a second, an aggressive three-stop strategy appeared to offer him the chance to challenge the McLarens.

It left him vulnerable in the event of a late Safety Car, however, and when one came, and rivals Charles Leclerc and Russell pounced, Verstappen lost his cool. Instead of trusting his instinct to ignore his team’s instruction to let Russell by, he backed off, then drove into his rival in what looked like a cynical attempt to at least damage the Mercedes, which drew a lenient 10-second penalty from the stewards, plus three penalty points which put him on the brink of a ban.

Verstappen’s title hopes, previously forlorn, soon looked unrealistic. He took points off Piastri with second in Canada but was taken out by Andrea Kimi Antonelli on the first lap at the Red Bull Ring.

The British Grand Prix was the kind of rain-affected race where Verstappen has tended to excel, but he chose a slim rear wing in the hope of dry conditions, and struggled when the track became wet, almost spinning off at one stage. He had the opposite problem at Spa: He chose a steeper rear wing but the track dried quickly. At least he had the consolation of a win in the previous day’s sprint race after slipstreaming past Piastri at the start.

Worryingly for Verstappen, the Hungarian Grand Prix was Red Bull’s least competitive showing yet. Few expected him to qualify as poorly as eighth, let alone finish one place lower.

Though McLaren are edging ever further ahead, Verstappen has demonstrated this year he’s still capable of pulling remarkable results out when he gets the chance. However he has also shown his temperament can still get the better of him.

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