What a crazy season! After 22 GPs (there are two left over the next two weekends), four teams have each won at least four Grands Prix. This has never happened before in the 75-year history of Formula 1. And it proves how high the level was at the top this year, how difficult it was to do better than your opponents.
At the start of the season, however, the Red Bull team managed to dominate its subject before being caught up by McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes. It was at the start of the season that Max Verstappen dug the hole – he already had a 69-point lead after ten Grands Prix, six more than today.
Since June, he has only been able to manage his rivals, scoring points in each race, watching for the slightest weakness in those who were racing better cars. With in passing one of the most grandiose demonstrations of driving that F1 has experienced: his comeback from 17th place to victory in the rain of the Brazilian Grand Prix.
It is with the talent, consistency and strength of character displayed this season that Max Verstappen has truly earned his stripes as any great champion. Especially since the 2024 season, at Red Bull, was complicated on a political level, his father Jos finding himself at war with Christian Horner, the boss of the team, whom the father tried to have fired. “It was very difficult, there were times when I wanted to leave the team,” Max Verstappen admits today.
In 2021, he won his first title following an error by the race director – he now recognizes that Lewis Hamilton should have been champion that year.
Then, in 2022 and 2023, he had an exceptional car. Last year, his Red Bull RB19 won all but one of the season’s Grands Prix, in Singapore. Winning the championship at the wheel of such a machine is necessarily a little less impressive.
“Super Max” himself recognizes it: this fourth crown, this year, is by far his best. The one that defines him as a true great among the greats.
Now, with four world titles, he equals Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel. Only Juan-Manuel Fangio (five titles), Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton (seven titles) are ahead of him on the list.
