Max Verstappen is a name which has dominated headlines in Formula 1 over the last few years after he secured four consecutive world championships.
No one has been able to stop him in the current technical regulations and his 2023 season is considered to be one of the best of all time.
Verstappen won all but three races, coming second in two and fifth in the other in a Red Bull car that performed everywhere apart from the streets of Singapore.
Performance dipped in 2024 and McLaren put themselves on the map by winning the Constructors’ Championship – a sign that the Milton Keynes-based outfit’s domination may be nearing a conclusion.
Verstappen might face a new challenge from Liam Lawson in 2025 too, as the Kiwi steps up from Visa Cash App Racing Bulls to be his new teammate.
He should offer more of a challenge than Sergio Perez did and produce another roadblock in his pursuit of a fifth straight crown.
How Max Verstappen used a clever ‘trick’ to avoid Las Vegas jet lag in 2023
Verstappen does a few things that his rivals do not, such as the heavy use of sim racing in his preparation for events as well as for fun.
Another tool he used to get ahead of the game was at the 2023 Las Vegas Grand Prix with ex-coach Bradley Scanes.
READ MORE: How long Max Verstappen believes a normal person could drive an F1 car for without crashing
Speaking on The Business of Winning Podcast, Scanes revealed the trick that they used to avoid jet lag at the inaugural Vegas event.
“Vegas is always the biggest one to manage because going to America, normally you would shift your circadian rhythm west,” he said.
“So you stay up later, you get up later and focus on that when you get on the plane you want to have a little nap as soon as you get on the plane. Then you’re looking to stay up.
“With the timings in Vegas, we actually shifted East as if we were going to Singapore and Japan. We were completely fine, it was good, whereas the rest of the team were struggling. There’s a lot of things you can play around with.”
Why 2025 is a finely poised year for Red Bull and Max Verstappen
Red Bull are removing an extreme front wing from Verstappen’s car in 2025 as they chase performance gains over the winter.
They ended the year with the third-fastest car behind both McLaren and Ferrari. Losing genius designer Adrian Newey to Aston Martin won’t make recovering their deficit any easier.
Oscar Piastri admitted he’s not ready to imitate what Verstappen does and lead his McLaren engineers in the direction that he wasn’t the cars to develop.
It’s the final year of the current technical regulations, so balancing potential gains in 2026 with a championship fight is going to be difficult for all teams.
READ MORE: Martin Brundle was in awe of one teenage Max Verstappen drive that ‘rewrote the textbook’
Red Bull’s focus for the season may depend entirely on what sort of start to the year they enjoy. If things are promising, they may go all-in as they did in 2021.
A poor year could also leave the Austrian team at threat of losing Verstappen to a team like Mercedes though, so they will want to remain in the hunt regardless of what is on the line for 2026.
