Red Bull and Verstappen want to become F1 champions once again in 2025. It’s quite a complicated mission, considering McLaren’s overwhelming dominance and the condition of a team that, after Adrian Newey’s departure last season, has found itself in a serious technical bottleneck. Nonetheless, the Milton Keynes-based team continues to push and refuses to give up.
McLaren dominates and could have done even more
F1 resumes in Miami. Five Grands Prix offer a reliable enough sample to draw some conclusions about the teams’ current form. McLaren is clearly the benchmark of the category, having claimed four victories. A dominance that could have been even more crushing if not for some mistakes by the drivers.
Even so, despite Oscar Piastri having won three races, his lead over the first non-McLaren driver is just twelve points. The “bulldog” trying in every way to stay close to the papaya-colored pair is none other than Max Verstappen. The world champion is going above and beyond to avoid losing contact with the top, even though it’s clear that the RB21 is not currently a winning car.
At Jeddah, in the spectacular setting of Saudi Arabia, the evergreen talent from Hasselt had a great opportunity to replicate his win in Japan, but due to a poor start and the resulting penalty, victory slipped away. Red Bull knows the RB21 requires more significant interventions, beyond the different engine cover specifications used during this first stint of the season.
Except for the Woking-based team, even the blue racing car has shown to suffer greatly in high temperatures—a weakness that emerged during morning sessions in Bahrain and Jeddah. Generally speaking, the Austrian team has only managed to extract the most from the car on circuits with low tyre degradation.
Hopes and responses between updates and front wing flexibility directive
In this context, Max puts on a brave face. He has long been asking for updates to his car, because with the current equipment, the gap to the competition is too wide. The Dutchman has now changed his approach during race weekends. Victory is no longer an obsession, since the car does not allow it. Nevertheless, he tries to stay close enough to seize any favorable opportunity to strike.
That’s what happened in Japan, and nearly again in Saudi Arabia. Consistent performance is the only way to try to benefit from the internal battle between Oscar and Lando. A strategy that, reluctantly, is the most profitable in the long term. Updates and the introduction of stricter front wing flexibility tests—starting from the Spanish Grand Prix—could reshape the competitive balance.
Max Verstappen changes his skin
The car’s lower competitiveness compared to past seasons, combined with greater experience, have played a key role in Max Verstappen’s development, as he’s abandoned his formerly aggressive instincts in favor of racecraft aimed at maximizing weekend results. This was evident at the Chinese Grand Prix and in Bahrain, where he refrained from overpushing.
One emblematic moment was Oscar Piastri’s easy overtake on the Dutch driver during the Japanese Sprint Race. A few years ago, that fight would have been much fiercer. Yet Max chose not to engage in a battle that would have compromised his tyres. A similar scenario unfolded in Sakhir, where he waited until the final lap to push his tyres to the limit and overtake Pierre Gasly’s Alpine.
And this despite it being just for a modest sixth place. It’s likely this is what he’ll be forced to do again during the sprint weekend in Florida. In last year’s Miami Grand Prix, we recall how McLaren struck their first major blow of the season—kickstarting their technical resurgence with a win, aided by a favorable race neutralization.
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