Max Verstappen voted Formula 1 Driver of the Year by RaceFans readers

Max Verstappen may have lost the world championship to Lando Norris, but RaceFans readers again voted him their Driver of the Year.

The Red Bull driver won more grands prix than anyone else in 2025. He sat 104 points off the lead with nine grands prix and three sprint races remaining, and recovered all but two.

Verstappen scored his first victory of the season in the Japanese Grand Prix, where he narrowly out-qualified the McLaren drivers to take pole position and lead them home. His second win came at Imola, where he brilliantly passed Oscar Piastri at the start and led the field home.

He endured a lean summer as Red Bull struggled to make their RB21 work at several circuits. But following a series of updates they managed to hit its set-up sweet spot much more consistently and he reached the podium in all of the final 10 rounds, six of which he won.

It may not have been enough to continue his run of world championship titles but RaceFans 55.8% of readers nonetheless voted him their Driver of the Year. Verstappen won by a wide margin: he received over three times as many votes as Norris, who came second in the poll. Norris’s McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri came third.

This is not the first time our readers have picked someone other than the world champion as their Driver of the Year. This last happened in 2016, when Daniel Ricciardo finished third in the championship but won the end-of-year poll.

RaceFans F1 Driver of the Year poll winners since 2010

2025: Max Verstappen
2024: Max Verstappen
2023: Max Verstappen
2022: Max Verstappen
2021: Max Verstappen
2020: Lewis Hamilton
2019: Lewis Hamilton
2018: Lewis Hamilton
2017: Lewis Hamilton
2016: Daniel Ricciardo
2015: Sebastian Vettel
2014: Daniel Ricciardo
2013: Sebastian Vettel
2012: Fernando Alonso
2011: Sebastian Vettel
2010: Lewis Hamilton

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