Opinion: was Max Verstappen's losing season his best year in Formula One?

There is a lazy shorthand in sport that greatness is only measured by titles. F1, however, has always rewarded those who look a little closer, and if you do that with Max Verstappen’s 2025 campaign, a compelling case emerges. This may have been his finest season yet, even without the championship trophy, because 2025 asked more of Max than any title winning year.

For the first time in a long time, he wasn’t in the fastest car. The margins that once cushioned Red Bull had gone. Instead we saw a grid where outright pace shifted from track to track. Verstappen went into weekends knowing that perfection wasn’t a bonus, it was a requirement. Qualifying laps had to be exceptional every time and if the car wasn’t quite there, he had to offer something superhuman to edge it back to the front.

He turned machinery that was often as low as fourth in the pace pecking order into podium and race winning performances. It became about his race craft over dominance, and his precise judgement over any kind of inevitability. He reminded us all, particularly his peers, of his skill, even if he wasn’t taking home the full haul of points every weekend.

There was also a level of off track distraction that could have easily destabilised a lesser driver. Questions about Red Bull’s leadership and long term direction swirled in the background, but somehow this made him more focused than ever. As if the cockpit was his true safe place, where he could escape it all, and only think about the tarmac in front of him. There were no theatrics, public finger pointing or histrionics. He turned up, locked in and extracted what was possible (and often more) every weekend. And layered over it all, perhaps the biggest change and challenge of them all. He became a father.

Anyone who is one will know that it can be joyful, overwhelming, sleep depriving, emotionally seismic, all at the same time. Whoever you are, it is a period of adjustment. In F1 we often say you can tell the racers who are fathers from those who aren’t. The mental load increases, priorities inevitably shift, some begin to consider their own mortality in a way they haven’t done so before, and as a result, become more risk averse.

What stood out in 2025 was how Max seemed to grow into that responsibility. If anything there was a new calm to him. He cleverly managed to shift the pressure back on to his competitors – this wasn’t his championship to win, it was theirs to lose. He seemed less reactive, more assured. He asserted himself in press conferences and the interview pen, rather than petulantly snapping at provocative questions.

This wasn’t a season of disappearing into the sunset, it was a year of resistance, evolution, adaption, and all the while his relentless self-demand. Having been 104 points behind the championship leader after his home race in Zandvoort, he finished the season just two points behind. He forced Lando Norris to dig exceptionally deep to win his maiden world title.

It was a year that Max probably learned more about himself than any other season, and one in which we all learned a lot about him too. He walked away without the crown for the first time in five years, but his aura fully intact.