Villeneuve: Verstappen, not Red Bull, is the backbone of the dynasty
Jacques Villeneuve isn’t buying the idea that Red Bull’s era of supremacy was primarily a machine built in Milton Keynes. In his view, it was forged behind the wheel. Speaking to RN365, the 1997 world champion argued that Max Verstappen “made that team champions” — and that the sport underestimates just how much a singular driver can lift an operation.
“Drivers are super important. Just look at Verstappen,” Villeneuve said. “He carried that team. He made that team champions.”
It’s a pointed take, especially now, with Christian Horner out and Red Bull’s leadership picture no longer as rock-solid as it was through the early 2020s. Villeneuve isn’t ignoring the rest of the ingredients — he credits Adrian Newey’s genius and the wider group that executed around Verstappen — but he keeps circling back to the same thesis: Verstappen is the key. The rest followed.
“[Verstappen] was the key factor — him and Adrian Newey together — but he was the key,” Villeneuve added. “And also Horner, the way he was running the team, the whole group there got it. Then it all went haywire a little bit. But [Verstappen] was extremely, extremely important — the key element.”
Strip away the rhetoric and there’s a simple, uncomfortable truth for the opposition: teammate yardsticks don’t lie. Across qualifying laps, race pace, points, poles, and podiums, Verstappen has made quick work of whoever was in the other garage, year after year. That relentless delta is why Red Bull’s winning run so often looked inevitable. The car was exceptional, yes. The driver turned it into a metronome.
It’s not a new phenomenon for the team. Sebastian Vettel did it from 2010 to 2013, converting a sharp Newey design and an aligned organisation into four straight titles. But the Verstappen era has felt heavier, more suffocating for the field — and that’s exactly the sort of gravitational pull Villeneuve is pointing to when he says one driver can change a team’s ceiling.
There’s a live test ahead. With the leadership reshuffle and the sport’s competitive order in flux, we’ll get a cleaner read on where Red Bull ends and Verstappen begins. Villeneuve’s bet is clear: the constant behind the trophies isn’t the logo on the nose, it’s the driver in the cockpit.
You don’t have to agree to see his point. In a sport obsessed with wind tunnels and spreadsheets, Verstappen keeps reminding everyone that the most decisive upgrade is sometimes the one you strap into the car.
