F1 2026: I think people are wrong about Max Verstappen

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Max Verstappen

I think people are wrong about Max Verstappen

They say the Dutchman's matured as a racer. Has he?

Chris Deeley

Monday 5 January 2026 17:57

Let’s start this one off with a simple proposition.

He might not have won the championship, but 2025 was the year that Max Verstappen showed he’s finally matured as a racing driver.

That’s something that a lot of pundits said in the second half of last year, with even departing Red Bull advisor Helmut Marko saying of the Dutchman on his way out the door: “He hardly ever has any lapses or outbursts, which were, of course, present in the early stages.”

It’s also...unconvincing.

Verstappen's rocky 2025 paints a different picture

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This is a year in which Verstappen openly flirted with leaving the team, further destabilising an organisational structure which was already crumbling.

This is a year in which Verstappen continued to complain near constantly about his car, other drivers, the weather and (probably?) that day’s New York Times Connections puzzle on team radio, and we all heard it.

This is a year in which Verstappen – above everything else – got so annoyed by being told to let another driver past him to avoid a possible penalty that he drove into the side of that other driver out of sheer petulance.

It’s worth mentioning that the nine points the Dutchman lost as a direct result of that moment of complete head-loss directly cost him his fifth consecutive drivers’ championship, which would’ve put him on a level matched only by Michael Schumacher in the sport’s history.

The first two points – the flirting with other teams and the radio messages – are excusable. He wants to win F1 races, and those things are ultimately in service of that desire. Crashing into George Russell because he was throwing a hissy fit? It is absolutely impossible to match that action with the phrase ‘matured’.

Here’s an alternate proposition, one which is a little less pithy but fits what actually happened in 2025 better.

Max Verstappen seems to have become a happy, more mature man off the track, but remains the same creature of reckless impulse as ever on it.

This year he became a father. He appears to have a wonderful, loving home life. For all that fame and money coming to someone at a young age can do, Max Verstappen seems like an incredibly well-adjusted young man. A bona fide good bloke.

On the track, his mood and attitude still seems entirely dependent on whether he thinks he can win races or not. It’s no coincidence that the ‘maturity’ comments started coming once his results started to pick up in the second half of the year – he was happier! He wasn’t liable to get himself into the kind of strop from just a handful of weeks earlier which, it’s worth repeating, saw him use his car as a battering ram to hit a rival and express his frustration.

Verstappen isn’t a more mature driver now than he was 18 months ago and heading to his fourth world championship. It cost him a fifth title, which he’s been fairly sanguine about. That might be because, matured or not, he’s comfortably the best driver in the sport and he knows it.

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F1 Max Verstappen