Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen won his fourth Formula 1 world championship at the Las Vegas Grand Prix after arguably his greatest campaign to date.
Max Verstappen claimed after the race that his Red Bull wasn’t the fastest car on the grid for 70% of the season, but he still managed to fend off the challenge of Lando Norris.
His victory in Brazil will be spoken about as potentially his greatest-ever F1 win and extended his lead in the Drivers’ Championship to 62 points with three weekends of action remaining.
Verstappen only needed a P5 finish in Las Vegas to extend his advantage by a single point over Norris, but that was enough for the custom T-shirts to be deployed by Red Bull and F1 organisers to put on a special cooldown car for him and engineer Gianpiero Lambiase to be taken to the Bellagio for his post-race interview.
The 27-year-old will enjoy the final races in Qatar and Abu Dhabi as a four-time champion before thoughts turn to his future.
Next season is likely to see Red Bull and Verstappen unable to gain their early advantage over McLaren and Ferrari.
However, all eyes are on 2026 when the regulations change and a new order of merit is established in the paddock.
Harry Benjamin was speaking about this on the Chequerd Flag Podcast and suggested that Verstappen may end up looking outside of Red Bull to continue his dominance if things don’t go to plan.
The most likely destination for the Dutchman would potentially be Mercedes and Toto Wolff would love to hire Verstappen if the opportunity ever arose.
George Russell and Kimi Antonelli could be fighting to be Max Verstappen’s Mercedes teammate in 2026
Mercedes have signed up George Russell and Kimi Antonelli ahead of next season, with Lewis Hamilton joining Ferrari.
Russell is a three-time race winner while Antonelli will make his debut at next year’s opening race in Melbourne.
Talking about the prospect of Verstappen heading to Mercedes if he decided to leave Red Bull in 2026, Benjamin said: “Lewis is leaving, George is going to be the team leader now.
“He’s stepping up into that number one role and if we are to believe the little rumours that are going around that it’s going to be a fight between Andrea Kimi Antonelli and George Russell next year to see who comes out on top and that will decide who Max Verstappen partners blah blah blah.
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“Russell has got to put a marker down and show that he is Mercedes’ next world champion, he is the man leading that team forward.
“And for Lewis Hamilton, well, his future is with Ferrari and I think in my gut he’s already seeing red in terms of where he’ll be next year.
“These last couple of races I’m sure he’ll be hoping for great results, but I think he has now got his mind set on next year.”
Mercedes looking to the future with George Russell and Kimi Antonelli in 2025
Wolff won’t be expecting miracles from Antonelli in his debut season, especially in a Mercedes have has been incredibly unpredictable throughout the current era of F1.
While they may find a solution for this over the winter, the 2025 campaign is likely to be Antonelli’s chance to get up to speed before the new regulations are introduced the following year.
Seeing as Carlos Sainz was available to Mercedes after losing his Ferrari seat to Hamilton and they decided against signing him, Wolff’s plans are much more long-term than putting the best drivers in the car right now.
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However, Verstappen is the exception to that rule given that he’s only 27 years old.
Mercedes would be faced with a serious conundrum should the Dutchman make himself available to the team at the end of next year, especially as the exact contract lengths of both of their drivers are unknown.
Russell’s contract could expire as early as next year, although every team is likely to have inserted exit clauses in their driver’s deals for a multitude of reasons.
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