Last Updated on August 5 2025, 11:06 am
The current Formula One world champion is heading for an experience he has not been familiar with since the 2020 season. Come December Max Verstappen will hand over his F1 crown to either Lando Norris or Oscar Piastri.
Gone are the hopes for a record equalling fifth consecutive F1 drivers’ championship and after a disappointing weekend in Hungary, Max now believes he won’t win another race this year after he could only manage P8 in qualifying last weekend and after the team made the wrong decision to two stop the Red Bull driver finished the Grand Prix in a disappointing with place.
As often is the case on Friday’s Red Bull’s pre-race car setup decisions were off the mark but unusually the team failed to find the proper correction in the simulator before final practice and qualifying. The team’s technical director, Pierre Wache admitted that “nothing was working” in Hungary and Dr. Helmut Marko revealed this was not the expectations coming into the race weekend in Budapest.
Verstappen accepts his title is gone
“No. I mean, that’s completely new. During the whole qualifying, we couldn’t find the necessary grip. We improved, but still, we really don’t know why,” said the 82 year old Austrian. Verstappen himself was pragmatic about the performance of the RB21. “We’ve tried a lot of different things, but at the moment nothing is working. Of course, I have some ideas, but I can’t always talk about them publicly. We’ll just have to wait and analyse everything after the weekend.
“In the end, it doesn’t hurt that much now because we’re not really fighting for anything anymore,” he added, reiterating the fact that he’s ono longer a contender for the drivers’ championship. When asked if he believed the situation would improve after the summer break, Max was candid when speaking to Dutch media. “No, not the way things are going right now. That’s just the way it is. It’s clear.”
With the huge 2026 regulations looming ever closer, most teams, particularly the front runners, will now turn off the development plans for their 2025 cars to concentrate on next year. There may well be a few more upgrades here and there in the pipeline, but the bulk of the resources will now be focused on next year.
Even so, Verstappen’s new boss Laurent Mekies is more positive than his star driver. The Frenchman pushed back against Verstappen’s comments suggesting the shocking performance of her RB21 was in fact circuit specific. “We accept the fact that we are probably not very strong on tracks like here, but what we have seen today was outstanding,” he said referring to the McLaren winning margin.
Mekies pushes back on Max’s negative comments
“So, if you look, no question McLaren are faster, but look at Spa, Max was able to fight certainly on Saturday and surprise everyone in the Sprint. So, let’s see,” mused the Red Bull boss. Whilst McLaren were dominant in the Grand Prix on both one and two stop strategies, qualifying in Hungary saw the closest top ten qualifying shootout in the history of the sport.
Just over half a second covered the all runners in Q3, but this doesn’t hide the fact that both Aston Martins finished ahead of the world champion along with rookie Sauber driver Gabriel Bortoleto.“The season is still very long,” Mekies continued. “Even if car development is going to heavily slow down or is pretty much going to be minimum from now on, we still have a lot of things we can learn, as this weekend showed.
“And through that, as difficult and as uncomfortable as it is, fundamentally you learn through these sorts of weekends. So better to have them early on. We will learn and if we are able to extract a bit more of the car, thanks to weekends like today, then hopefully we can put up a better fight.”
Unlike Verstappen, Mekies believes the issues facing the team in Hungary won’t be in evidence during the coming rounds. “I’m also quite confident that it’s a one-off,” he said. “It will not change the fact that we have a narrow window. But I think to be dramatically out of it like that, I’m also quite confident that with all the tests we’ve done this weekend, I’m quite confident that it will be a one-off.”
Hungaroring configuration
The configuration of the Hungaroring often throws up surprises from time to time and the track is often described as a glorified karting circuit. This is because the grip here is rear limited which requires a different kind of setup than from most of the rest of there F1 venues.
Further, the slow nature of a number of the turns mean this favours a car which is good in low and medium speed corners. Ferrari have for a number of years been suited to the slower turns given the traction of the cars at low speed has been exceptional.
This year the circuit had been resurfaced along with other significant upgrades made since last year, this was expected to increase tyre degradation and make the one stop strategy for the Grand Prix impossible. Yet exceptionally cool temperatures for the central European country at this time of year, meant as the race evolved the tyre wear was not as poor as the F1 teams expected.
Strange conditions combined
“Therefore, it points towards more tyre usage and the tyre being switched on more than our performance,” Laurent Mekies concluded. While Max Verstappen’s outlook is bleak, the Red Bull team boss chose to express a more positive view. Quite simply the new surface, strange weather conditions simply caught the team out with their simulations.
The strange set of circumstances saw Aston Martin drivers achieve their best qualifying positions together with classified finishing places for the year. Kick Sauber who have had a difficult year in the final transition to becoming Audi were also surprised that their rookie driver Gabriel Bortoleto qualified in seventh and finished the race one place better.
With Verstappen’s fighting spirit and Red Bull’s relentless efforts to improve, its not out of the question Max will win ore races in 2025 and the slippery low downforce setup of the RB21 which saw success in Belgium, may well come into its own again at the Italian Grand Prix in Monza.
Zak brown lays a trap for Mekies
The CEO of McLaren Racing Zak Brown is not known for his tact and diplomacy. The latest heir to Bruce McLaren’s Formula One outfit has been spitting fire in the paddock for a number of seasons.
Brown nailed his stake to the mast with an open letter to the FIA in 2022, calling for strict punishments for any team in breach of the newly introduced budget cap, obliquely describing Red Bull Racing as “cheats.”
At the USGP in Austin, Horner called a press conference where he responded to Zak Brown’s claims stating: “For a fellow competitor to be accused of cheating, to accuse you of fraudulent activity is shocking. It’s absolutely shocking.” Horner went on to outline how children of his staff had been bullied at school following the McLaren boss’s accusations…. READ MORE
With over 30 years of experience in Formula 1 as an insider journalist, I have built trusted connections across the paddock, from race engineers and mechanics to senior team figures. At The Judge 13, I and a handful of trusted colleagues share exclusive Formula 1 news, expert analysis and behind-the-scenes stories you will not find in mainstream motorsport media.
