There has been little doubt for a long time that Max Verstappen held a third Formula One world championship in his hands. Now the Dutchman has sealed the deal in Qatar after a season in which no other driver has had so much as a look-in, the nature of his relentless drive to the title can be fully appreciated. Some in the paddock even consider this the “Verstappen era”, and the 26-year-old has made a convincing case to be considered among the greats.
Verstappen has all but redefined the terms of what constitutes a dominant season in F1. He has taken 13 wins from 16 races for Red Bull, including a record-breaking run of 10 consecutive victories. Every time he has taken to the track there has been a sense of inevitability. His teammate, Sergio Pérez, in identical machinery, has been left flailing, pushing too hard in a forlorn effort to close the gap.
The chasm between them is illustrative of the next level Verstappen has attained, appreciated not least by his Red Bull team principal, Christian Horner. “At 26 years old it is an outstanding achievement,” he says. “The manner in which he has done it has put him in the echelons of the greatest in the sport. To have won three titles in a row with the dominance that he had in 2022 and then this year is something the sport has not seen for a long, long time. It is easy to underestimate the level at which he is operating. He is earning his place with the greats, I believe he is up there with the very best of them.”
It is an unsurprising assessment from Verstappen’s proud boss but on this season’s performances, it’s also one that’s hard to argue with. Yes, the Red Bull is the class of the field this year, displaying breathtaking speed through corners and in a straight line. Verstappen would repeatedly race into a three-second lead within the opening laps after which, like F1’s own Keyser Söze, he was gone.
The winning margins were often cavernous, in some cases almost embarrassingly so, such as the 33.731sec lead over Lando Norris in Hungary when the flag fell. There were the dominant runs, untouched from pole to flag in Bahrain, Austria and Silverstone, but what stood out were the races in which he had to break a moderate sweat.
Highlights included Verstappen coming from 15th to second in Saudi Arabia and through the field from ninth to victory in Miami, a moment that surely broke Pérez. Then a superb win in the wet at Monaco, a track where Red Bull knew they would struggle. He went on to return victory from sixth on the grid at Spa, while at his home GP in Zandvoort, in a difficult wet-and-dry race of high tension, he was calmness personified in claiming a win Horner recognised as something special.
“At Zandvoort there were so many opportunities for him to mess it up, a lot of drivers go to pieces at their home grand prix because of the heightened pressure,” says Horner. “It was wet and dry, we saw so many drivers making bad calls and he kept it together even when there were a couple of lucky punches against him early on. He didn’t panic, gathered himself together and drove brilliantly.”
The team have without doubt played their part as they secured a sixth constructors’ title. Adrian Newey, their chief technical officer who has designed cars that have won 12 constructors’ titles and now 13 drivers’ crowns for three different teams, noted the level at which Red Bull and Verstappen have been operating. “I’ve been fortunate enough to have been involved in cars that have been dominant in the past, but we’ve never had this level of consistency,” he says.
Throughout it all Verstappen has, understandably, beamed with enjoyment. Yet along the way there were signs that for all the ease with which he was cantering to the title, his focus and the exacting standards he expected of himself and others remained undimmed.
In Belgium – where he already had a 125-point lead – during a difficult qualifying session he let loose at his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, questioning the team’s tactics after almost failing to make it to Q3. Both his upbeat demeanour and demand for excellence have played their part in the scale of the success this season, believes Horner.
“It permeates, particularly in the garage,” he says. “He is a tough cookie but you know he is going to give you 120% when you put him in the car and he expects the same in return – that drives a team. Everybody knows he is giving it all so they want to give it all. He is brutally honest. That’s the one thing about Max that you have to totally respect, he is totally straight.”
Horner knows his driver can achieve so much more and with the regulations set until 2026 Red Bull still have to be caught, but even then there is no indication that beating Verstappen will be an easy task as he sets about defining an era with a smile on his face. “Since 2021, when he was outstanding, we then gave him a better car in 2022 and a better car again in 2023 and he has just maximised it every time,” says Horner.
“He is still evolving, still learning, while the standard he is operating at now is on a different level.”
