How Max Verstappen is saving F1 2025 from one-team domination dullness

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When McLaren’s Oscar Piastri crossed the finish line to win the 2025 Miami Grand Prix, only his teammate Lando Norris was in sight. The crowd at the Hard Rock Stadium had to wait an age in Formula One terms for anything other than an MCL39 to round the track’s final corners.

The gap from Piastri to Mercedes driver George Russell in third place was 37.6 seconds — the biggest winning margin between two teams since the 2023 Bahrain Grand Prix (38.6 seconds).

That year, Red Bull won by more than 20 seconds eight times, as it swept to 21 victories in 22 grand prix races — a record-breaking 95.5 percent conversion rate. In 2025, with Piastri’s Miami triumph, McLaren now has five wins in six races. Russell has already predicted McLaren should convert a similar win total to Red Bull’s best season, such is its car advantage. But 2025 is not quite 2023 on repeat.

At this stage in 2023, Max Verstappen led the standings by 39 points. After six races in 2025, Piastri is 16 points ahead of Norris — a gap that should have narrowed to just two had Norris converted his superior pace across the recent weekend in Miami. There is very little between the two McLaren drivers, bar Norris’ propensity to make mistakes when pushing the car to its limit. In 2023, Verstappen’s teammate, Sergio Perez, might have been racing in another class compared to Verstappen’s greatness.

And while things are closer at the top this year, the subplots in the drivers and teams behind McLaren are barely submerged. The four peaks of Russell’s excellent season (he has been on four podiums, matching his 2024 total already), the car struggle sagas at Red Bull and Ferrari, plus the looming in-season rule change on flexi-wing technology (a key McLaren strength) are the cutting through the waves like conning towers to the periscope of Perez’s 2023 Verstappen pursuit. At any point, a full submarine might emerge to properly challenge McLaren’s mastery of these 2025 seas.

But its domination has already been raked by the torpedoes from another threat. Verstappen once again showed his class. His Japanese Grand Prix victory is the main blemish on McLaren’s season so far and Verstappen might’ve won again in Saudi Arabia, but for a rare Red Bull poor start and Piastri (legally) outfoxing him in their first corner skirmish.

What edged the overwhelming scale of McLaren’s second Miami win in succession into subplot status itself was how Verstappen lit up the first half of that race. Hamilton’s jaw-dropping team radio sassiness with Ferrari covered up the actionless rest.

Verstappen’s first lap clash with Norris in Miami was interesting in that, for once in this seemingly never-ending streak of savage wheel-to-wheel battles involving the Dutchman, he made a mistake. It was his Turn 1 lockup that preceded the ensuing controversy, when Norris was left with little choice but to go for a move around the outside of Turn 2, such was his better run out of the opening corner.

Verstappen locks up during his battle for the lead of the 2025 Miami Grand Prix with eventual race winner Oscar Piastri (Hector Vivas / Getty Images)

And 13 laps in, there was another braking error from Verstappen at Turn 1, illustrating the challenge of bending the RB21’s clear limitations to his iron will.

The Miami race laid bare how far ahead the McLaren is on tire preservation. Piastri and Norris showed they might have the edge during hot daytime practice sessions in the Middle East before the Miami round, but the cooler night race settings in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia brought their rivals back into play. In Miami, Verstappen was just never winning.

But he gave it absolutely everything — particularly against Norris, as the Briton was recovering back up the order from his early trip off the road in the aftermath of Verstappen’s uncompromising defence. In their second battle, Norris also showed how he lacks Piastri’s decisiveness in overtaking — and this ended up costing him the Miami victory.

Norris later claimed that Verstappen’s efforts here “ruined” his own race and this was “not racing very smart”. The numbers do bear this out — Verstappen lost nearly six seconds while fighting Norris to Russell, particularly critical when the Mercedes driver gained time during the mid-race virtual safety car (VSC) activation.

Verstappen both capped the captivating first half of the Miami contest and wrecked the second — Norris, clearly the faster McLaren driver on the day, couldn’t close Piastri’s gap. While the Australian was recording “not the strongest second half of the race of my life,” even as he won, Norris cut not far off two-thirds of the lead Piastri had smartly built up while Verstappen was contesting second. That’s before the second McLaren driver called time on his chase in the final laps.

All in, it was another fascinating look into Verstappen’s racing psyche. He couldn’t have predicted how the VSC would cost him a trip to the Miami podium for the first time in the race’s four-year history, but it was yet another example of how Verstappen refuses to give any ground whatsoever against title rivals — and he remains in play for a fifth successive crown, especially with that flexi-wing clampdown.

Perhaps the better comparison for the 2025 campaign is 2020. That season, I keenly watched each race’s track-map visualization — straight lines scaled for a lap’s duration, complete with track undulations to offer some physical references. They are displayed on the many televisions that populate media centres at F1 circuits. The drivers are team-colored dots that string out across the line as a race develops.

Time and again that year, as Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas were unleashing the might of the Mercedes W11, only Verstappen’s dot remained anywhere near. He threatened a team with even more pure car speed than Red Bull in 2023 and McLaren this year — and beat it twice.

These days, Verstappen is even better, leading the team of the season three times (the most of any driver) in qualifying. It is Red Bull letting him down with poor pit stops — including during the Miami sprint — as well as its ongoing car performance issues that mean there is a real chance Verstappen walks before his contract is up. And that would be a driver swap story to rival Hamilton’s blockbuster Ferrari move last year.

Red Bull team boss Christian Horner said it was “human error” behind the sprint pitstop unsafe release and contact with Kimi Antonelli’s Mercedes in Miami. As with the Liam Lawson/Yuki Tsunoda driver swap, such high-profile Red Bull mistakes underline what a drama factory the team is overall. And F1 is much more interesting for its tales and tribulations, as Red Bull prepares to celebrate 400 grand prix starts at Imola this weekend.

Some don’t like Verstappen’s racing tactics, even though they thrill others — but his immense skill is making the 2025 F1 title campaign much more interesting than it might otherwise be.

(Top photo: Mark Thompson / Getty Images)

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