Mekies on Verstappen: “He is motorsport” — why 2025 might be Max’s most complete season yet
Max Verstappen didn’t leave 2025 with a fifth title, but he might have left it with something more telling: the admiration of a paddock that watched him drag a not-always-dominant Red Bull into contention and look utterly relentless while doing it.
New Red Bull team boss Laurent Mekies, who took the reins in July and finally got the chance to work alongside Verstappen after their paths missed at Toro Rosso a decade ago, didn’t bother with superlatives — he simply described the Dutchman as a driver who lives the sport on a different frequency.
Spend five minutes with Mekies and he’ll talk about Verstappen’s technical feel in terms engineers really understand. He calls Max the best sensor in the car — and yes, probably the most expensive one — because his read on balance and tyres is so sharp it’s almost unfair. More than that, Mekies says Verstappen doesn’t ever switch off. Between grands prix? He’s in the sim, not as a pastime but as homework. Free weekend? He’ll find a GT3 car — the Nürburgring was on the menu this year — and go racing for the sheer utility of it. He immerses himself in the projects, doesn’t float above them, and then comes back to the F1 garage with a way forward.
All of that mattered this season because Red Bull’s RB21 wasn’t the automatic weapon it’s been in the recent past, especially early on. Verstappen still racked up the points, but it wasn’t until the second half — when the car became a more consistent platform — that he could turn the screw with a string of wins and push the McLarens hard. He ultimately fell short of Lando Norris in the title fight, but only after making the endgame properly tense.
If you want a paddock temperature check, the team principals delivered it: Verstappen was voted the best driver of 2025 in their annual anonymous poll. Mekies didn’t actually take part — nor did Ferrari’s Fred Vasseur — but he hardly disagreed with the verdict.
“He’s in it day and night,” Mekies told reporters at the Qatar Grand Prix, reflecting on his first months in charge with Verstappen as his reference point. Meetings, sim work, race weekends, the lot. No shortcuts, no off-switch. It sounds clichéd until you see the output.
Interestingly, even Helmut Marko — no longer in post at Red Bull after the season finale, but still the most honest barometer of Verstappen’s level — put 2025 ahead of the juggernaut year that was 2023. The context is the key: this time Max didn’t always have the fastest car. Tyre warm-up windows were finicky, some circuits didn’t love the package, and yet when it mattered in qualifying, Q3 in particular, he delivered. Calm, clinical, decisive.
That’s the other side of Verstappen 2.0 that insiders quietly point to. The edges have softened without dulling the blade. There’s more composure on Saturdays, fewer scrappy moments on Sundays, and an even greater knack for turning a race that’s getting away from him back into one that’s under control. It’s the kind of evolution that tends to happen once the trophy cabinet is full — and Verstappen’s is, already stamped with four World Championships — but it’s rare to see it this pronounced while the fight is still this fierce.
Mekies’ perspective carries weight because it’s based on close-quarters observation rather than historical praise. He missed the Toro Rosso years by months when he moved to the FIA in 2015; now, after picking up the Red Bull job mid-season, he’s had a front-row seat. What he found wasn’t a superstar drifting above the grind, but a driver obsessing over marginal gains, using every tool available, from sim to GT3, to extract something he can bring back to Sundays.
The final ledger says runner-up in the championship. The paddock whispers say 2025 might be the season that best sums up Verstappen: the relentless execution, the bottomless appetite for the craft, the way he makes an imperfect package look just about perfect when it counts. Norris and McLaren deserved their title. But ask the people who see the data, and many will tell you Verstappen set the bar anyway.
