Max Verstappen's 5th title: Why a triumph in 2025 won't be his best championship campaign

As we head to the final race of the 2025 F1 season, Max Verstappen is only 12 points behind Lando Norris in the championship. It's almost unbelievable to see the level of capitulation on McLaren's side that has resulted in this and, at the same time, the level at which Red Bull and its lead driver operate.

If Max Verstappen wins the race in Abu Dhabi and Lando Norris finishes off the podium, we're looking at a 5th world title for the Dutch driver. With that he'll equal Michael Schumacher's feat of winning five consecutive world championships. The shock factor of this championship battle is such that there are many who have claimed that if the Dutch driver clinches it, this would be his best title campaign. Well, is that really the case? Let's take a look.

Max Verstappen's 5th title: Not the driver's best campaign

Why it could be

The improbability

Well, first of all, not many would have expected Max Verstappen to be in title contention as soon as the chequered flag fell in the Las Vegas GP. At that moment, he was looking at a 40-point deficit to Lando Norris, a gap that would have been impossible to surmount in two races.

The other key issue when it comes to this campaign is the fact that if we look at the 2025 F1 season as a whole, Red Bull has not had the faster car. There has been a resurgence of sorts in the second half of the season, and the car is legitimately competitive. But there was a first half of the season as well where, except for a handful of events, the car was not in the same league as McLaren.

A lot of success in F1 depends on the tools of the trade. It's safe to say that if we look at the season as a whole, the McLaren boys had the better tools.

The deficit

After the F1 Dutch GP, Max Verstappen was looking at a deficit of 105 points to Oscar Piastri. The Australian was fast, consistent, and had the better car. At that moment, even a mention about a potential Max Verstappen title run would have been dismissed.

After the race in Qatar, Max Verstappen has now overhauled Oscar Piastri in the championship. If we go by records, Verstappen winning the championship from a deficit of more than 100 points is going to count as one of the widest margins a driver has overcome to win the title.

The fact that he would do that with a car that was, on average, in the best-case scenario, at par with McLaren speaks volumes of his achievement.

Why it isn't

The competition

In F1, there's always this phrase "it's all about the car" that's used when talking about success that a team or a driver achieves. To a large extent, that is true as well. However, you also need other key elements in place as well, which involve strategic acumen, operational efficiency, world-class drivers, and an ability to perform under pressure.

When we look at Max Verstappen's adversaries right now, in Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, they have a better car overall compared to the Red Bull. But do they have the better overall team in place? When it comes to making strategic calls, the Woking-based squad is quite clearly a step behind the Milton Keynes-based team.

The ability to perform under pressure is something that is under question, and to add to it, the error-prone nature of both McLaren and the drivers just gifts points to the Dutch driver. As Max Verstappen himself remarked before the F1 Qatar GP, if the roles were reversed and he were driving that McLaren, the championship would have been over by now, and it's hard to dispute that.

The lack of pressure

One of the major characteristics of a championship battle is the fact that there is a constant back and forth between title contenders from the start of a season to the end. We can argue that Max Verstappen has potentially never been a title contender until the race in Qatar, where he was within a race win to take over the lead in the championship.

Hence, the pressure of the title fight and turning up to every race and having the spotlight on you is something that Verstappen has not had to do. Now, while that's not Max Verstappen's fault in any which way, it is also a reality that for a long time, the odds on the Dutch driver becoming a champion were next to nothing.

The quality

Finally, this one might be a bit critical of Max Verstappen, but that is primarily because he is that brilliant. Quality-wise, the 2025 F1 season is not on the same level as 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. The driver had a complete blowout in Barcelona this season, a moment he admittedly regrets. The driver has lost points at other moments as well, for instance, in Jeddah, where he had a poor start, or Silverstone, where he spun.

Those are the moments that we didn't necessarily see from him in the other title campaigns, and one could argue that the intensity and the stakes were higher in those years. Max Verstappen is still the best driver this season, and he has made the fewest mistakes as well. But in terms of performance, it might not rank as high as some of his other years.

Which one is then?

Now this is the important bit because even if we claim that Max Verstappen's 2025 F1 campaign is not his best, it doesn't mean it's not good. It just means that it's not on the level of 2021, where the Dutch driver went up against one of the greatest talents in F1 history, who was driving for a team on the longest dominant run in the sport, blow for blow for 22 races, and came out on top.

The "AD2021" controversy notwithstanding, Max Verstappen arguably had his toughest campaign mentally and physically, and it pushed him in a manner no other championship has ever pushed him. Whenever we talk about the best championship campaign for Max Verstappen, it's hard to look beyond the 2021 F1 title campaign, and there aren't many that come close to it.