Max Verstappen the F1 season: no World Championship but many victories

To keep open a World Cup fight that seemed to have quickly been reduced to a challenge between teammates, something, or someone, truly special was needed. And so, rising from a first half of the championship dominated by the internal frictions of his team, Max Verstappen managed to reopen a 2025 that no longer seemed to be material for his magic. And instead, surprising even himself, the Dutchman returned to give impressive performances, led by a united team again – under the direction of team principal Laurent Mekies, after Christian Horner’s troubled farewell in July – and fired up by the hypothesis, albeit remote, of being able to attempt an assault on a McLaren so far away as to appear unattainable. And while the papayas solidly won the Constructors’ title, with six races to spare before the end of the championship, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri saw Max’s shadow approaching ever closer, capable of reducing a gap of 104 points – the ones he had behind after the Dutch GP – down to 12, at the start of the Yas Marina weekend in Abu Dhabi, the penultimate of the season. And then the title was lost by just 2 points, a pittance considering the 24 GP extra-large World Championship.

Verstappen’s comeback

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“But if I had had a McLaren the title would have already been closed a long time ago” said Verstappen without hiding, convinced that his rivals “kept the World Championship open due to too many mistakes”. The two drivers of Andrea Stella’s team, in perfect balance throughout the championship, thus divided the team’s points and between errors on the track, internal decisions and some unexpected technical problems, such as the unpredictable double disqualification of the cars in Las Vegas, Max’s impossible dream has become something in which we can still hope. The specter of what could have been his fifth consecutive world title, in achieving a feat achieved only by Michael Schumacher in the history of Formula 1, began to threaten the protagonists of this World Championship, shining a light on a comeback that won over the entire motorsport public. A comeback which at the end of this season was not succeeded by the lion Verstappen, defeated in Qatar by a McLaren that returned to dominate and by Lando Norris, mathematically world champion with one race to spare before the end of the championship.

the future

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But the success of the Briton, deserved and won on the track in a tough three-way fight, is not enough to erase the near miss of the Dutchman from Red Bull who, in the year of his defeat, demonstrated more than ever what he is capable of on the track, chasing with strength and stubbornness a dream that others would have abandoned much earlier and doing so with a mental freedom, a lightness devoid of any pressure, which gave us the best page of his journey in motorsport. Max, who will return to racing in 2026 with the number 33 and will abandon the number 1 of the reigning world champions, will present himself at the start of the season aware that the new regulation changes will dictate the future arc of his career: “My contract expires in 2028 but everything will depend on the new rules – admitted the Dutchman in Qatar – and whether they will be pleasant and fun. If they won’t be fun, then I really don’t see the reason to stay”. A statement that suggests all of Verstappen’s consistency, also seen on the track in 2025: racing, and doing it as best as possible, when doing so has value. Winning, having fun, trying until the end. And you can’t emerge defeated from a World Championship when you race like Max Verstappen did.