Can a driver who is 36 points behind with 116 left to play for really be world championship favorite?
Mathematically, no, but Max Verstappen’s progress towards the top of the standings seems inexorable. How the McLaren drivers deal with the gatecrasher in what was once their own private battle might well decide the destiny of the championship. As a result, with four grands prix (and two sprints) remaining, Verstappen is somehow simultaneously the outsider with nothing to lose, and a man with a fifth title tantalizingly within his reach.
There has never been a title fight quite like this one. If Verstappen were to pull it off, having been 104 points behind after the Dutch Grand Prix, it would be the most dramatic turnaround in history. That’s not only measured by total points, but also if you adjust the numbers to allow for the different points systems over the years. For him even to be talked of as a realistic threat with four events to go is an astounding achievement, meaning that at worst he’s on course for a heroic failure. At best, it could be something truly remarkable.
But for all the improvements made by Red Bull and the fact that Verstappen has been able to close the points gap even on a relatively disappointing weekend such as Mexico, where Lando Norris’s McLaren dominated and he could only manage third, there is a more powerful weapon in his armory: the fact he is Max Verstappen and has been here before on multiple occasions. Down and out just two months ago, and already with four titles to his name, this is effectively a free hit for him, and he just doesn’t need this as much as either Norris or Piastri.
That’s no criticism of a lack of desire, simply that he’s in a completely different place psychologically. For both McLaren drivers, this is potentially the culmination of all they have worked for, a potentially career-defining peak that will give them lifetime membership of what would then still only be a 35-member club. After all, while McLaren can be expected to continue to be a force in F1, there’s no guarantee that will be the case through the imminent power unit and chassis rule changes, and both will fear this might be their one and only shot. That’s the big difference between Verstappen, who has been there and done that, and would just be climbing the same old mountain he’s scaled multiple times before.
On top of that, like Yul Brynner’s mechanical cowboy in the original Westworld, Verstappen just keeps on coming no matter what. Championship fights are stressful at the best of times, and how the protagonists deal with that pressure – fear even – could swing the fight one way or another.
But if Verstappen is the immovable object that the others must resist, Norris and Piastri are on ever-shifting sands. Piastri had long been the frontrunner. He took the lead in April and, after building a 34-point with victory in the Dutch Grand Prix at the end of August, there was almost a clamor to crown him among F1 fans. While the job wasn’t done, he now had a clear advantage that could be managed. That made the five-event run that followed straightforward, as even Piastri’s Baku disaster, crashing both in qualifying and on the first lap of the race, only amounted to an eight-point swing against him thanks to Norris’s struggle.
But the moment he crossed the line in Mexico in fifth place, slipping to one point behind Norris, everything changed for him. Now, it’s a straightforward fight in which however you resolve the equation, the better McLaren driver over the final four weekends will prevail in the battle inside the team. Where it gets more difficult is, say, if Piastri is ahead of Norris in a race but with Verstappen in sight – how do you slice and dice the strategy then? And it’s those kinds of questions that can lead drivers to do strange things.
Equally, Norris’s position is now transformed. He’s on what is effectively equal footing with his teammate and also has to incorporate Verstappen into his calculus. While playing catch up in the past couple of months, he’s looked increasingly assured and convincing. Might that change now he’s the frontrunner, even if only just? It’s easy to play cod psychology when it comes to this scenario, and mental strength will play a part. After all, the great challenge in elite sport is executing your skills, following the process like nothing is at stake when, in reality, everything is. The idea of a ‘clutch player’ is not one that raises their game when it really matters, but one who delivers as if it really doesn’t when everything is on the line. It’s why drivers always roll out the cliché about taking it one race at a time. Teams do the same, as Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies pointed out recently.
Piastri’s early-season advantage is gone, and the Australian is now in a straightforward fight with teammate Norris – whilst also needing to keep an eye on Verstappen. Zak Mauger/Getty Images
“The championship standing is a consequence,” said Mekies. It doesn’t change anything for us. Whether we are close or far, we still want to, as a team, come to race tracks and leave knowing we have extracted absolutely everything and that everything is good enough to fight for the win.”
It’s a simple statement, one that’s easier to implement as a team than as an individual driver. However, it’s not the only factor at play. What makes motorsport so fascinating is the interplay between the human and the technical. Take Piastri’s struggles in Mexico, where the low-grip conditions made it difficult for him. It’s true that it played to Norris’s strengths and his own weaknesses, but given the six-tenths gap in qualifying and hefty race pace deficit, to what extent does the response to the title pressure feed into that, if at all?
And how about the mistakes in Baku? What happens at Interlagos this weekend will help to answer that, given it’s a track that shouldn’t inherently be a problem for him, albeit one where Norris was quicker in dry conditions last year in terms of underlying pace. From the outside, we can’t answer that with any certainty, and it’s probably the same for Piastri even though there are measurable physiological responses to stress that might offer a hint to him and those around him. It could be that the pressure wasn’t even a minor factor, but even so the change in position from chaser to chased could also completely change the situation.
What’s particularly fascinating are the variables in the remaining events that will play a part. In Brazil last year, the McLaren was comfortably fastest in the dry but struggled in the wet thanks to the need to switch to a higher downforce rear wing and, most problematically, problems with brake locking. Had it stayed dry last year, Norris might well have done the sprint/grand prix double (Piastri had to let him by to win the Saturday race), but the rain meant Verstappen bagged an unlikely victory from 17th on the grid. On such ‘Acts of God’ might championships turn, and the McLaren drivers will have good reason to look at the current weather forecast for this weekend with suspicion, given there’s a chance of rain.
Then again, McLaren will have worked on those weaknesses and might have turned things around. What happened last time isn’t necessarily a valid prediction of how it goes next time round. Interlagos is a track with a habit for producing the unexpected, where the skillset and adaptability of drivers can be stretched to breaking point.
Of the three tracks that complete the season, Qatar and Abu Dhabi are most obviously McLaren territory. For all Red Bull’s improvement, those could be good opportunities for Norris and Piastri. Las Vegas, meanwhile, is the real wildcard. Based on last year, you would say it could be a nightmare for McLaren, as it was then. However, tire graining was the problem then and the tires have changed this year to be more resistant to this. That made a big difference in Mexico, where McLaren thrived but might not have done had the graining of 2024 been a factor, which it wasn’t.
Then you have the question of track temperature and the form of the other frontrunning teams, with Mercedes again favored by many to lead the way. And given Red Bull troubleshooting its car problems, you cannot even attempt to map its performance in Las Vegas last year onto 2025, meaning it is very tough to call exactly how that weekend might impact things. Even the teams themselves won’t be able to make high-confidence predictions.
The almost infinite complexity of F1 is what makes it so fascinating. The destiny of the world championship could and probably will swing partly on factors entirely outside of the control of the teams and drivers. Sometimes, such pivot-points might play for or against their driving toolbox, but once again it draws the eye to Verstappen. After all, no driver is better-equipped to deal with that than he is, even if the Red Bull might overall still not be the equal of the McLaren.
Yet he also offers a big opportunity to Norris and Piastri. However unwanted his presence is to them in their battle, they both have the chance to be crowned champion after holding him off as well as beating their own team-mate. In that regard, while Verstappen is making their lives difficult, his presence might, ironically, serve only to enhance their eventual triumph. It could also help them to ensure the conflict inside the team is kept under control given there is now a third party who can steal their collective thunder.
The game has fundamentally changed to the one they played earlier in the season, and potentially it could actually be to their benefit. If, that is, they can stop him. And the best way to do that is what it’s always been: go out there and win. Sometimes, winning a championship really is that simple.
