Verstappen says he’d have wrapped the title “a long time ago” in a McLaren, goes on the attack in Qatar
Max Verstappen isn’t dressing this up. If he’d been driving a McLaren this year, he reckons the championship would already be over.
“We’re still in this fight because of other people’s failures,” he said on Thursday in Lusail, laying out the cold math of a season that’s swung wildly since the summer. “If we had the dominance that McLaren had at times, the championship would have been done a long time ago.”
It’s a striking admission from a driver who’s built his reputation on suffocating control. But 2025 hasn’t been a Red Bull steamroller. Verstappen was 104 points down after Zandvoort and, by his own admission, mentally checked out of the title narrative back then. Since then, it’s been about damage limitation, inching closer whenever opportunity knocked.
Vegas was the mother of all opportunities. Both McLarens were disqualified for excessive plank wear, and Verstappen converted with a win, slicing the deficit to Lando Norris down to 24 points. That’s one slip-up, one swing, away from the kind of final-weekend chaos F1 lives for.
Verstappen isn’t pretending this is suddenly in his hands. “Five [titles] is better than four,” he shrugged, “but if it doesn’t happen, it’s not going to change my life. We have to be realistic.” The reality, as he tells it, is simple: Red Bull maximised what it had, McLaren sometimes tripped over itself, and the door stayed ajar.
He’s also been paying attention to the other side of the garage doors. McLaren’s insistence on equal treatment between Norris and Oscar Piastri — admirable, principled — can cost you in a knife fight, and Verstappen knows it. He’s pounced when strategy hasn’t tilted one way, when qualifying misfires or reliability blips have left orange paint on the wall.
Now it’s Qatar, and Verstappen arrives with nothing to lose and a track record to lean on. He’s won the last two visits to Lusail and this is the final Sprint weekend of the season, which means points are in play early and often. Lose more than two to Norris across the round and the title slips out of reach before Abu Dhabi. Don’t, and the heavy stuff rolls into Yas Marina with everything still twitching.
“For us, nothing changes,” he said. “We go all in. We have nothing to lose. Even if you win everything, you still need a bit of luck, right?” It’s a rare line from a serial winner who’s usually the one supplying other people’s bad luck. But 2025 has been that kind of season — gritty, opportunistic, defined by the margins rather than the margin.
There’s a version of this year where McLaren’s car advantage and clean weekends yielded a coronation weeks ago. There’s also the one we’ve got: Verstappen lurking within range, armed with a record at this track, the Sprint to sharpen his elbows, and the kind of straight-talking clarity that makes you believe he’ll send it at the first gap he sees.
He’s not promising miracles. He is promising a fight. And with two rounds left, that’s enough to make Sunday matter.
