It was before the summer break when Max Verstappen’s and Red Bull’s season hit its nadir, a lowly eighth-place finish at the Hungarian Grand Prix saw both driver and team surely writing off their chances of winning the championship.
It was so low that the world champion could not see a world in which he won another race in 2025. But write them off at your peril, because it is a combination that has defined greatness before and is doing so again.
After his home race, the Dutch Grand Prix, Verstappen slipped to 104 points behind the title lead. In the four races since, he has brought it down to 40. At this rate, he will be the world champion, with both the McLaren drivers struggling to craft together any momentum.
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The RB21 has found something that it could not earlier in the year. Upgrades brought in the wake of the summer have seen its performance transformed. Even if the drivers in papaya have underperformed in recent races, Verstappen has been genuinely quick and even could have taken pole and the victory at Singapore had his final Q3 lap been smoother.
Ultimately, it is 119 points out of the last 133 possible; including three wins in the last four races, four in five if you count the sprints, the comeback that is being staged is quite remarkable.
But on his dominant US win, Verstappen said to skysportsf1.com: “Yeah for sure, the chance is there [of the championship].
“We just need to try and deliver these weekends until the end. We will try whatever we can. It’s exciting and I’m very excited until the end.”
On his US Grand Prix triumph, that ensured he scored maximum points in Austin, Texas, Verstappen added: “What was key was that first stint where Charles [Leclerc] was basically holding up Lando quite a bit because that’s where I could make my gap.
“As soon as Lando was in clean air he was very fast, matching or being faster than us. Basically that gap stayed more or less the same until the end, where Lando again of course had to pass Charles.”
Verstappen’s three victories in the last four races have come on different track layouts. Although Monza and the Baku City Street Circuit are dominated by low-drag, the amount of slow-speed corners, as well as the impact of the wind, suggests a more global high performance that the RB21 and Verstappen excelled with.
And the Circuit Of The Americas is a very different track layout, with a greater spread of corner types; with the high-speed snake of the first sector and the slow-speed that appears at the start of sector three.
Therefore, despite Norris’ race being hampered by the brilliant defensive work of Charles Leclerc, Verstappen has been a credible force on different track layouts, which was not the case earlier this campaign.
