As Formula 1 gears up a new season with expectations for the closest championship since 2021, Tom Kristensen has warned that any mistakes could be “fatal” to a driver’s title ambitions.

Formula 1 last witnessed a no-holds-barred title fight in 2021 when Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen raced wheel-to-wheel for the championship, the protagonists recording 14 1-2 results and two huge crashes.

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Verstappen emerged victorious and has since gone on to win a further three titles as Red Bull dominated in F1’s new ground-effect aerodynamic era.

But while he secured 15 victories in 2022 and a record-breaking 19 a year later, last season he was back down to single digits with just nine wins in a season in which he went 10 races without a P1 – his longest winless streak since 2018/19.

His RB20 was the successful car on the grid with McLaren clinching six wins and Ferrari five, but it was by no means the fastest.

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The honour went to McLaren who nailed their in-season upgrades only to be undone by strategy errors, driver mistakes and also the intra-team battle between Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri.

Verstappen clinched the World title but Red Bull were only third in the Constructors’ which was won by McLaren with Ferrari third.

It has Le Mans legend Kristensen claiming the F1 2025 championship could be a close affair as the top teams’ drivers take points off each other.

“In terms of speed, in general, they are there,” he told F1Maximaal. “Everyone just needs to be a bit more daring and a bit more consistent.

“With the current championship, I expect them to keep taking a lot of points off each other in 2025. In a lot of ways, the championship will be much closer. Any mistakes could be fatal then.”

However, when all is said and done, the Dane believes it is Verstappen’s ability behind the wheel that could set him apart of his rivals.

“Max obviously performed, but the team worked hard after it was shaken up quite a bit,” Kristensen said. “They lost some personnel and there were obviously some hostilities at the beginning of the year.

“In Qatar, they lost a lot of lap time, but later on the same day, after parc fermé opened, they optimised the car and changed a lot. You could almost say it was a bit of a panic.

“But if you manage to turn it around in such a way that you not only take pole position but also win the Grand Prix…

“I don’t underestimate the team’s work, but you can only do something like that with a driver like Max. He clearly has a lot of confidence in both his engineer and the mechanics.”

“I would say it (Red Bull’s problems) has been a good lesson for the team, to go through that,” he added. “Only good teams can go through that and survive.”

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