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Max Verstappen continues to impress, but while in years past he was winning handily with the best car in Formula One, he is now overperforming with a clearly subpar racing car.
He finished third at the Mexican Grand Prix, which would have been disappointing in seasons past but was a solid result for Red Bull in 2025.
Verstappen may not be having his best campaign as far as racking up points, but he might be having his best season as a pure driver.
Despite having what many believe is a mid-table car, the Flying Dutchman still sits in a very comfortable third place behind the dominant McLaren pairing of Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.
Even so, Verstappen should still be considered the best driver on the grid, even if he doesn’t win the Driver’s Championship this season.
Max Verstappen Helped Put Red Bull Back on the Map Post-Vettel
The young Dutchman joined the team in 2016, a few years on from Sebastian Vettel’s dominant run of four straight championships for Red Bull from 2010-2013. And just a few years later, in 2019, Verstappen finished in the top three, surpassing his elder teammate, Daniel Ricciardo.
Almost instantly, Verstappen established a rivalry with the top dog, Lewis Hamilton, and by 2021, he had bested Hamilton, becoming the first Dutch driver to win a Formula One championship. And he did it in about as dramatic a fashion as humanly possible on an F1 track:
Those that thought that Hamilton would be back to retake his crown in 2022 were sorely mistaken. Red Bull utterly dominated in 2022 and 2023, winning the Constructors by over 200 in 2022 and more than doubling the next best team in 2023.
In the latter year, Red Bull and Verstappen set tons of records: Verstappen won 19 of 22 races and finished on the podium in 21. The Red Bull team as a whole won 21 of 22 races that year, a Formula One record.
When that season wrapped, the entire Red Bull team probably felt like they would never die and their domination would last forever. But the bottom fell out quicker than expected.
Red Bull Begins To Fall Off — But Verstappen Remains
The next season, in 2024, was the one that really proved Verstappen’s greatness as a driver separate from the elite engineering that went into making that Red Bull car the best on the grid in 2022-2023. The campaign started off with more of the same: Verstappen won seven of the first 10 races. His teammate, Sergio Perez, finished second in three of the first four races as well.
Verstappen won just two of the final 14 races, but he performed consistently enough to retain the Driver’s Championship. However, Perez’s performances fell off a cliff, and he finished eighth.
Former team lead Christian Horner liked to blame the driver for not being Verstappen, but it was pretty clear to all that it was Verstappen carrying a bad car, not Perez struggling with a good one.
Red Bull fell all the way down to third in the final Constructor’s standings, which further burnishes Verstappen’s credentials as an elite driver no matter the machine he happens to be in: only three times this century has a driver won a Championship that was not shared by his Constructor.
He is also one of just three drivers in F1 history to win a Driver’s Championship with his Constructors finishing outside the top two (Keke Rosber, 1982, and Nelson Piquet, 1983).
Red Bull Exodus In 2025 Does Not Affect the Dutch Robot
After that sharp drop in performance to finish the 2024 campaign, things didn’t get better for Red Bull. Team primary Horner was embroiled in a sex scandal, and he was eventually shown the door when the results stopped making up for the negative press from his off-track issues.
Perez was also kicked to the curb, but as most would have predicted, bringing in another driver wasn’t going to bring Red Bull back to relevance as a team.
There is only one Max Verstappen, clearly, as he has maintained his dominance somewhat in 2025 while the other Red Bull driver has struggled mightily — while driving the same car.
Through the Mexican GP, Verstappen has racked up 11 podiums and five wins. The other Red Bull driver, Yuki Tsunoda, sits way down in 17th with zero podiums and just 28 points overall. Say what you will about Tsunoda, but that is not just a gap. It’s a chasm. And only the machine can cause that.
Is It Worth It to Bet on Max Verstappen?
The one good thing about the divergence in performance we’re seeing from Verstappen and the rest of the Red Bull team is that Formula One sharps can finally bet on the Dutchman again.
During his 2022-2023 barrage, his odds were so short it was not even worth it to make a wager on Verstappen. But now, with real competition from Norris and Piastri in the orange McLaren car, he’s offering very intriguing odds for every race.
Once you figure out how to choose safe betting sites in Canada, you can get on your preferred sportsbook and consider a wager on Verstappen for the first time in probably three years.
And for those that have wagered on sports before, you know that it’s always a blessing when you can put action on the best player/driver in the competition when they’re offering reasonable odds.
So while Red Bull’s decline is negative for Red Bull, it has also served to underline just how great Verstappen is, and how far ahead of the field he is as a pure driver.
Not to mention Verstappen fans can make a little money off the Dutchman again.