Max Verstappen is not the 2025 Formula 1 world champion. For the first time since 2020, the four-time title winner has fallen short in his pursuit of a fifth consecutive crown. Lando Norris, driving for McLaren, has claimed the championship in a campaign that exposed cracks at Red Bull Racing and forced the Austrian squad into a mid-season transformation. Yet this defeat, painful as it may appear on the surface, could prove to be the most valuable experience of Verstappen’s career and a catalyst for renewed dominance in the seasons ahead.
Early warning signs and the Horner exodus
The opening race in Australia already hinted at the turbulence awaiting Red Bull. Only a late rain shower, which trapped Oscar Piastri in the sodden grass, denied McLaren a commanding one-two finish. Verstappen lost the championship lead for the first time in 1,029 days, a symbolic moment that foreshadowed the struggles to come. In China, his long-run pace failed to secure a podium. Japan offered a brief respite as Verstappen demonstrated his craft on the classic Suzuka layout, holding off both McLarens with vintage racecraft. Imola delivered another victory, but the RB21 was already morphing into what paddock insiders began calling a tractor.
Between Imola and the summer break, Verstappen managed just one podium: a second-place finish behind George Russell in Canada. His collision with Russell in Spain, where he rejoined after cutting the first chicane and then made contact with the Mercedes in what many viewed as retaliation, drew widespread criticism and calls for a suspension that never came. Beyond a spin in wet conditions at Silverstone, it marked his only significant error of the season. Austria brought retirement after Kimi Antonelli’s overly optimistic braking sent the rookie into Verstappen’s sidepod on the opening lap.
Rock bottom in Budapest
The nadir arrived at the Hungaroring. Verstappen crossed the line ninth, a result that would have been unthinkable during Red Bull’s years of dominance. No mechanical failure, no contact, no strategic gamble gone wrong. Pure pace deficit. The McLarens finished 72 seconds ahead. Verstappen was the last car on the lead lap, a statistic so jarring it seemed to belong to a different era. It was the lowest finish of his Red Bull career without an external factor to blame, a humbling that cut deep in Milton Keynes.
Laurent Mekies arrived during the summer shutdown, replacing Christian Horner as team principal after a mass exodus of senior personnel. The Frenchman inherited a squad in crisis, with morale fractured and technical direction unclear. The paddock questioned whether Red Bull could arrest the slide before the championship slipped irretrievably beyond reach.
The fightback that fell just short
What followed was one of the most remarkable comebacks in Formula 1 history. From 104 points behind after Zandvoort, where Piastri took victory on Dutch soil, Verstappen clawed back 102 points over nine race weekends. Victories in Italy, Azerbaijan, Austin, Las Vegas, Qatar, and Abu Dhabi brought him within two points of Norris by the season finale. That he achieved this resurgence while McLaren fielded the objectively faster car made the recovery all the more extraordinary.
Ultimately, it was not enough. Norris secured the drivers’ championship, his first world title. The internet exploded with hypotheticals. If Verstappen had not returned the lead to Piastri in Saudi Arabia. If Russell had not been struck in Spain. If Antonelli had not crashed into him in Austria. If McLaren team orders at Monza had not gifted Norris three additional points. If Antonelli had held Norris behind in Qatar. The scenarios multiplied endlessly, each one flipping the final two-point margin.
Why hypotheticals miss the point
These counterfactuals ignore the full picture. If Piastri had not spun on slicks in the Australian rain or crashed in Baku, he would be champion. If Norris had avoided his Canada crash, his blown engine at Zandvoort, or his disqualification in Las Vegas, Verstappen would not have even entered Abu Dhabi as a title contender. A championship is decided across 24 Grands Prix and six Sprints. As Verstappen himself once remarked with characteristic bluntness: “If my mother had balls, she would be my father.”
What matters is not what might have been, but what the season revealed. Red Bull Racing had to confront systemic weaknesses in management structure, technical communication, and development philosophy. Verstappen had to navigate machinery that could not deliver on his talent, a humbling experience after years of near-total supremacy. The team’s ability to reverse course mid-season, introducing upgrades not primarily for raw speed but to better understand their wind tunnel correlation issues, demonstrated a capacity for adaptation that most squads take years to develop.
The title that was never the priority
For Verstappen, the championship became secondary to the transformation itself. His demeanour shifted dramatically after the summer break. The frustration and brittle tension that defined the first half of the season gave way to renewed energy and focus. Mekies brought what Horner no longer could: a listening ear and a willingness to challenge established routines. Success can calcify habits that later become obstacles. Red Bull had fallen into that trap, and only the shock of genuine decline forced them to reassess.
Mekies described a “dark period” in Milton Keynes after the Abu Dhabi finale. That darkness, uncomfortable as it was, prompted essential questions. How does the team respond to defeat? What structural changes are needed to reclaim competitiveness? Where can infrastructure be improved? Most teams spiral for seasons after losing their way. Red Bull solved it in half a year, a testament to their underlying resilience.
What this means going forward
The 2025 season will be remembered as Lando Norris’s breakthrough, but also as the year Red Bull Racing learned how to lose. That education, far from weakening the team, has positioned them for sustained success in the new regulatory era. The upgrades introduced post-summer were not superficial performance gains but foundational improvements in understanding and correlation. Verstappen, now 28, has experienced a form of adversity that eluded him during his four consecutive title campaigns. He emerged sharper, more patient, and equipped with insights that only defeat can provide.
For the four-time world champion and his supporters, the winter break brings disappointment, certainly. But the trajectory from Hungary’s ninth-place humiliation to Abu Dhabi’s two-point deficit suggests a team rediscovering its identity under pressure. Had Red Bull maintained their old patterns, the decline would have deepened into irrelevance. Instead, they have laid the groundwork for a return to the summit. Congratulations to Norris for 2025. But Verstappen’s most important victories may still lie ahead.
