Four-time Formular 1 World Champion, Max Verstappen admits he and Red Bull will not go into F1 2025 as the title favourites.
Verstappen was dominant on his way to the 2022 and 2023 titles, his most recent run to the World Championship was a hard-fought affair in F1 2024.
With the Verstappen and Red Bull dominance fizzling out, McLaren’s Lando Norris emerged as a genuine threat to his grasp on the F1 crown.
McLaren though were successful in knocking Red Bull off the Constructors’ Championship summit, with Ferrari securing a runner-up result.
Verstappen is not so sure he and Red Bull are going into F1 2025 as the ones fancied for the titles.
“We won’t be the favourites, but that’s okay,” Verstappen told ServusTV.
“We still have to change a lot of things to be number one again. But that’s okay and maybe sometimes it’s good not to be the favourite at the start of the season.” he said.
In another interview with RacingNews365, the Dutch said; “I am not expecting us to go into next season as the favourite, but that’s a good challenge, I like it,”
“We went into the 2024 season as favourites and maybe it is good for us as a team, like a little wake-up call like, ‘Come on guys, we have to be on it’.
“It is a nice challenge to try and be back on top, because I think we’re still not quick, but we are getting there and sometimes are able to win again. That is at least possible at the moment, and it is a good challenge over the winter to push on, learn from the mistakes, learn from what we learned in the season and how to optimise the car and find more performance.
“The car is getting better, it is still not fixed but we are getting on top of those things, and I’m sure that if we fully nail our issues, we can actually unlock a lot more performance out of the car.
“I don’t really think about [becoming a five-time champion] too much, I just want to enjoy it, see where we are in the beginning of the year and trust the team. They are going flat out at it, I gave my feedback and they know what I want from a car, and hopefully we can make it work.”
The 2025 season is the last season of the current ground-effect F1 regulations that hindered Hamilton at Mercedes ahead of new chassis and engine rules arriving for 2026.
