Verstappen heads to Vegas with title hope alive — but Red Bull won’t make promises
Max Verstappen rolls into Las Vegas with the math still on his side and the mood somewhere between bullish and brutally honest. Three races to go, 83 points still on the table, and a 49-point gap to Lando Norris. You don’t need an abacus to see the path — but it’s narrow, and Verstappen knows it.
He’s been relentless since the summer break: on the podium at every round, and back on the top step in Italy, Azerbaijan and the United States. It’s the sort of run that drags you back into a title fight almost by force of will. The problem? McLaren’s momentum, led by a composed and increasingly clinical Norris, hasn’t exactly wavered. Back-to-back wins for the championship leader have set the terms for this triple-header that will decide the 2025 crown.
First stop: the Las Vegas Strip Circuit, a place Verstappen conquered in its inaugural 2023 running. Another big result would keep the pressure on. Whether Red Bull’s RB21 will play nice in Nevada is a different question.
“You know, we have been quite regularly wrong at predicting where tracks will be suiting us or not,” said team boss Laurent Mekies with a wry smile. “We didn’t think Monza will be suiting us. We didn’t think Baku will be suiting us. We didn’t think Singapore will be suiting us. So, honestly, it’s not where the focus goes… the focus is on ourselves.”
It’s a telling admission and not the sort of thing you heard often in the Verstappen-Red Bull era of predictability. But 2025 has demanded flexibility over certainty. Red Bull’s window of performance has sometimes been narrow, as the team found the hard way while yo-yoing through set-up changes at Interlagos. Vegas, with its long drags, low-downforce trim and usually chilly night-time surface, won’t make that dance any easier.
Mekies isn’t blaming the venue. “I would not blame the track really. I think it’s always very difficult, and sometimes, you manage it better than other times. I think that’s a simple truth, but it’s easy to forget how difficult it is to do it, even when you win. It’s simply very difficult every race.”
Verstappen’s view is similarly pragmatic. There’s no bold prediction, no attempt to conjure certainty where there isn’t any — just a driver who knows what he needs and what’s been missing on the fringes.
“Very different tracks, so it’s difficult to know to be honest,” he said of the triple-header. “I think we’re still struggling a bit on tyres, so it will depend on track layout, temperatures. We can get it into a good window, but not always. That’s what we have to focus on. That’s what we will focus on in the coming races.”
As for the title arithmetic and the suggestion Brazil was the turning point, Verstappen didn’t bite. He rarely does. “I mean, what are we, 49 points behind now? So it’s also… I mean, we didn’t lose the championship here or whatever. We lost the championship from race one ’til Zandvoort. We had a lot of weekends where we simply were not quick enough. Then, of course, you have a big gap. Then we had good moments where you get some points back, but not enough. That’s how the season goes.”
That last line lands because it’s true. Red Bull haven’t been bad; far from it. They’ve just been human more often, while McLaren have found that ruthless consistency Verstappen used to hoard for himself. And now it’s Vegas, the sport’s neon wildcard, where straight-line efficiency, braking stability and tyre temperature management can flip the order in a heartbeat.
If there’s comfort for Verstappen, it’s that he’s done this dance before. He won on the Strip. He’s thriving under pressure. And there’s still time, just not much of it. He’ll need the car in its sweet spot fast, he’ll need clean Saturdays, and he’ll need McLaren’s margin to look a little less inevitable by Sunday night.
No grand statements from Red Bull, no bluster. Just a championship fight that’s gone the distance, a driver who refuses to let it go, and a team that knows the next three weekends will either vindicate their grind or underline how sharp the sport’s margins have become. Vegas will tell us which.
