Does Verstappen predict title five in '25? 'Then you get more of an idea'

Max Verstappen secured the 2024 championship with a Red Bull Racing car that had not been the fastest on the F1 grid for most of the season. The Dutchman's exceptional talent meant he was able to stay ahead of the drivers from McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes.

If Verstappen has to make an guess, he says that in seventy per cent of the races this season he no longer had the fastest car. At the start of the year, the RB20 clearly was, so it seems that from Miami onwards, there was not a single race in which he had the fastest car? "Hardly any, no," Verstappen responded in conversation with Dutch media, including GPblog. "We actually had problems from race 1. Only then we had such a big lead that that was less of a problem. Monza was the worst weekend."

Most of the time, though, Verstappen managed to keep his cool and make the best of it. Sometimes it came with frustration. "Well, Hungary. That was not a nice afterthought," he looked back in Las Vegas, only to confirm that the turnaround followed in Austin. There, the Dutchman won the sprint race. "There were some races where the car felt a bit more stable. So that was already a race when it got a bit better."

Does Verstappen expect a strong season in 2025?

Verstappen did not have the best car in Las Vegas either. Of course, everyone is curious to see whether Red Bull manages to strike back in 2025. "This weekend was obviously not good enough relative to Mercedes. Relative to Ferrari on medium it was. But on the hard tyre again it wasn't. Mercedes was just the fastest."

"And for McLaren, it didn't run quite normally either. The same problem as with us. This is a bit A-typical circuit though. In Qatar we see more normal things again. So you might get a bit more of an idea," Verstappen concluded.

This article has been created in collaboration with Matt Gretton