Max Verstappen believes a fifth consecutive Formula 1 title would have fallen in his favour “a long time ago” if he had a “dominant” car like McLaren has had in 2025.
With the penultimate race weekend of the 2025 season underway in Qatar, Verstappen sits 24 points adrift of championship leader Lando Norris.
That said, the Dutchman’s hopes of bagging a fifth consecutive F1 title could be dashed if the McLaren driver outscores him by two points over the weekend.
Despite wrestling an unforgiving and unpredictable RB21 all season, the 28-year-old has mounted a sensational comeback since the summer shutdown.
Heading into the Italian Grand Prix weekend, the Red Bull driver sat a mammoth 104 points away from the lead in the Drivers’ Championship.
But four wins since then have seen Verstappen claw back that disadvantage – aided by McLaren’s double DSQ at the Las Vegas GP, last weekend, of course.
Reflecting on his title charge so far, the Dutchman conceded that while the team has maximised its results given its package, he is wary of the fact that his title credentials so far have been circumstantial to say the least.
“If it [the Championship] doesn’t happen, it’s not going to change my life,” he told F1.
“You know, like fine, great, if I win another one, but we also have to be realistic. We are in this fight still because of other people’s failures, not because of if you look at the whole of a season, what we did.
“Yes, we did really well. We have really maximised all – pretty much all – races before the ones that I mentioned.”
Verstappen also highlighted how the MCL39’s inherent dominance throughout this year has allowed the pair of Norris and team-mate Oscar Piastri to still be contending for the title despite errors and incidents like at Vegas.
If it were up to Verstappen, he reckons he would have already wrapped the title up in a car as dominant as the McLaren.
“But if we would have been in the position of how dominant of a car they had, the championship would have been over a long time ago,” he asserted.
Verstappen reveals the one 2025 F1 moment he regrets
Verstappen’s first half to the 2025 campaign was riddled, with the RB21’s lack of competitiveness often compounding his frustration.
The opening eight rounds of the season saw Verstappen win only two races at Suzuka and Imola, respectively.
At the Spanish Grand Prix in June, however, the Milton Keynes-based squad’s strategy finally sent him over the edge.
A late race call to box for the white-walled Hard tyres saw him struggle and lose positions to the likes of Charles Leclerc and George Russell in quick succession.
In retaliation, he tried an aggressive move to retake the position from the Mercedes driver but ended up running into Russell’s W16.
The stewards deemed the Red Bull driver to be at fault – handing him a 10-second time penalty and three penalty points on his license.
The Dutchman eventually took the chequered flag in 10th, but is adamant that while he regrets his actions, he will not blame that moment as decisive if he does lose out on the title.
“I regret how I handled it at the time,” he said.
“But you also have to understand how I got to that point. We did a lot of things wrong in that decision before I even got to the moment where I got upset, or whatever.
“But it’s also because I care a lot. I could have also easily said ‘well, whatever, the race is done anyway’, but that’s not how I am.
“Of course that’s a moment that you look back at and that was not okay,” he said. “But it’s also not a moment that, at the end of the season, let’s say I miss out on the championship, it’s not a moment that I will say ‘that’s the moment that I lost it.
“Because we’ve lost it because of our general performance. We’ve still been in it, also because of our performance. Because we did maximise or over-perform in other places or we just were better in executing.”
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