Max Verstappen produced one of the most commanding drives of the 2025 season in the Abu Dhabi finale, leading from lap one and disappearing into the distance. Yet the race still ended with McLaren celebrating both world championships. Plenty of fans immediately asked the same question: why didn’t Max deliberately back the pack up and help his teammate Sergio Pérez disrupt the two orange cars behind?
We have seen it before. Lewis Hamilton famously slowed the field in 2016 to expose title rival Nico Rosberg to the chasing pack. Sergio Pérez delivered a masterclass of defensive driving against Hamilton himself in the dramatic 2021 finale. So why no repeat in 2025?
Verstappen gave the answer himself in the post-race media pen, and it boils down to one simple problem: McLaren had two cars in the fight, Red Bull effectively had one.
The Piastri factor that changed everything
“We had really good race pace, there wasn’t much else I could do,” Max Verstappen explained. “The tricky part was that Oscar [Piastri] was on a different strategy. You never know exactly how fast he is going to be when he comes back out after his stop.”
Oscar Piastri started on the hard tyre and swept past teammate Lando Norris on the opening lap. That move instantly put Verstappen in an impossible position. Slow down too much to create a DRS train and Piastri – running long on the harder compound – would have emerged from his pit stop with fresh rubber and a clear track to hunt the leader down.
“If I slow the group too much I probably lose the race to Oscar anyway, and then Lando gets the DRS from whoever is behind,” Verstappen continued. “Up front we were simply too fast; everyone else couldn’t live with our pace.”
The new Yas Marina layout made blocking almost impossible
The four-time world champion also pointed to the redesigned Abu Dhabi circuit as another key factor.
“Charles did everything he could to get on the podium, it was impressive. But they went for two stops and that complicated things. If you stay on a one-stop it’s hard to control the pack behind, and this new layout makes it even more difficult than it was in 2016.”
Proof came when Yuki Tsunoda tried to hold up Lando Norris after the McLaren’s stop. Despite aggressive direction changes, Lando Norris breezed past with DRS on the long straights. Verstappen believes any attempt to bunch the field would only have created more DRS trains and made life easier for the cars hunting him.
In the end the maths was brutal: Verstappen could win the race or maybe hand McLaren a 1-2 and still lose the championship. There was no scenario where slowing down delivered the title. Sometimes the fastest car simply has to watch the bigger prize slip away.
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