Max Verstappen saving Red Bull
The numbers from the 2025 World Championship are confirming what has already been evident in previous years: Max Verstappen is the absolute reference point for Red Bull on track, and his performance is light-years ahead of any second driver the Milton Keynes team has selected since 2019. The Dutchman has scored 137 of Red Bull’s 144 points in the standings, and even the Liam Lawson-Yuki Tsunoda swap is not yielding benefits in the Constructors’ Championship.
The Anglo-Austrian team certainly builds a “tailor-made” car that consistently enhances the reigning world champion’s strengths, without concerning itself too much with feedback from the second driver. This approach has worked so far because Verstappen has won four titles. However, 2025 is telling a different story, with car #1 fighting at a disadvantage against a superior McLaren. And if Super Max were to grow tired of a Red Bull no longer competitive for wins, would the team be ready to replace him?
Karun Chandhok’s words
According to former F1 driver Karun Chandhok, if Verstappen were to leave Red Bull, the team could face the same situation Benetton did in 1996 after Michael Schumacher’s departure to Ferrari: “When he left, the team won just one race in the following seven years (Hockenheim 1997, editor’s note) after having won two world championships in a row. That is the risk for Red Bull. If Max left, Red Bull would have to completely rethink how it designs its cars.”
“We’ve been saying the same things for seven years. Since Daniel Ricciardo left, Red Bull hasn’t found a second driver competitive enough to deliver the results and points it needs,” he added. “All these drivers who passed through—I’m thinking of Pierre Gasly and Alex Albon—are achieving results in other cars: there is something wrong with the way the car is designed or works for other drivers.”
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