Max Verstappen is showing how to win in F1 with less, like Alonso in 2012

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Preseason misery. An early win against much faster McLaren opposition. A Formula One legend forged differently come the season’s end. Max Verstappen in 2025 is starting to look a lot like Fernando Alonso in 2012.

Alonso was Ferrari’s properly prancing horse back then. He came so close to the third world title (the one he still chases) at his first attempt with Ferrari in 2010, losing out in bitter circumstances in Abu Dhabi that year. But the 2012 Ferrari F2012 was both visually unappealing and slow compared to established frontrunners Red Bull and McLaren.

Alonso, ever the master media manipulator, claimed during the preseason that “I don’t remember any Ferrari that is ugly or any Ferrari that you don’t like,” while his colleagues soon admitted the car was nearly a second off the ultimate pace due to its handling deficits. And yet after just two races that year, he’d made the unloved F2012 — awkward stepped nose and all — a winner. And Alonso headed the points standings.

Come the season’s end, he missed out on the title to Sebastian Vettel, agonizingly close once again to that elusive goal. But throughout the year, he wrestled a sub-par Ferrari to positions it had little right to claim.

His early Malaysian victory was magical, followed by a stunning home triumph in Valencia and another standout win in Germany. Red Bull finally upgrading its car to vault back to the pack it had led so comfortably in 2011 made the difference. McLaren’s rapid car that year was undone by its poor reliability and eventually saw Lewis Hamilton leave for Mercedes the following season.

Much has happened since 2012 to cement Alonso’s legacy in motorsport. He’s still carrying the pain of those close title defeats, compounded by having to watch first Vettel and then Hamilton gobble up championships as his prime years ticked by. But making such a fight of it in 2012, in that car, not only fully displayed Alonso’s class but changed how his F1 legend is understood.

Verstappen’s is already written differently. Like Vettel, he’s a four-time world champion. And he still has time left to surpass Juan Manuel Fangio, Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher in terms of titles as well. But what Verstappen is doing in 2025 more than stirs the memories of Alonso’s unrelenting 2012 brilliance.

Alonso scored the first of his three 2012 wins in the wet-weather thriller in Malaysia that year (Roslan Rahman / AFP / Getty Images)

Of course, there are differences. The 2012 Ferrari was, by quite some way, an inferior car compared to 2025’s RB21. If you express an F1 weekend’s quickest laptime as 100 percent, you can then calculate how fast each car is and plot their pace across a season in what is known as the supertimes method. It’s not flawless; as with the fragile modern tires, race pace often pays differently than qualifying pace, considering when the points are distributed. And, as in the case of 2012 for Red Bull, excellent car development is undersold in such stats.

However, using supertimes, we can see that the 2012 Ferrari came in at an average pace of 100.728 percent that year, compared to the pacesetter McLaren at 100.197 percent. This means the Ferrari was 0.531 percent off the year’s raw pace (100 percent being the theoretical fastest and nearly impossible for most cars to achieve). The 2025 Red Bull, so far, registers an average of 100.125 percent. McLaren leads at 100.017 percent, resulting in a 0.108 percent difference. It’s hardly the no-hoper being vaunted in some quarters.

But Verstappen can only play the circumstances before him and he’s the only Red Bull driver able to cope best with what is clearly a very tricky car to drive and set-up. Right now, he’s the only driver who can regularly pull miracles against the best team, Alonso-style, with an overall slower car.

Verstappen is Red Bull’s best asset right now. It would make tactical sense for the team to throw everything at upgrading the RB21, even with the 2026 rules reset looming. Red Bull would be silly not to shelve theoretical mid-term potential in favor of urgently proving, by midseason, that it can still give Verstappen a car capable of winning most weekends. He’d also surely help it recover any lost ground next season, as this year is certainly proving.

And if Alonso is F1’s political animal, Verstappen might be its polyhistor beast: deeply fluent in every facet of racing, yet no less Machiavellian. That streak, in both cases, is understandably too much for some to bear. Verstappen, too, can bend the headlines to his will — see Jeddah 2024 with the risk of Helmut Marko being ousted at Red Bull and how he made his feelings clear on the matter — and get what he wants from rule changes (FIA swearing climbdown, anyone?). And time and again in this era, he’s the fastest and most aggressive on track.

Verstappen’s Imola win brings his 2025 victory total up to two from seven races (Marco Bertorello / AFP / Getty Images)

That last aspect made the difference at Imola, where, for once, there wasn’t even a whiff of going too far in a wheel-to-wheel fight. I think that was the best pass I’ve seen Verstappen pull, and his highlights reel is long in this regard.

For all the chatter about the race format rule changes for this weekend’s Monaco race, Verstappen’s one-lap prowess this year could earn him a third win in eight events, given the ongoing overtaking challenge in that sunny place for shady people.

And only his relatively poor sprint results so far this term mean he’s not right with the McLaren drivers points-wise, as Alonso was at the same race seven stage in 2012. Alonso was then five points adrift (to Hamilton). Perhaps the most significant difference in comparing 2012 to 2025 is that, right now, it feels like Verstappen could actually come out as the title winner. Verstappen has 22 points to close to Piastri, with 17 races and four sprints still to go. Hindsight will have the last smug say, but in succeeding as he has with the worst Red Bull since 2020, Verstappen has got a real shot.

Post-Monaco, Red Bull hopes the flexi-wing technical directive expected at the Spanish Grand Prix will restore its place at the head of the pecking order. The directive targets flexible bodywork — especially rear wings — that can bend under load to reduce drag without breaking the rules. McLaren has clearly mastered this dark art in the last 12 months and rivals hope the directive forces it into car changes. McLaren denies that this will occur. But this, too, could help determine Verstappen’s short-term employment fate.

What isn’t in question is that he’s already achieved his F1 legend status — those four titles alone are enough. But if he’s truly to have a case for F1’s “Greatest Of All Time” standing — and here partisanship must be cast aside in what is always a subjective consideration — he needs something else to offer besides a pile of titles.

He can offer searing speed and wet-weather wonder drives, but so can many other candidates. What separates the likes of Jackie Stewart, Schumacher and Hamilton in establishing their claims to greatness (along with overall excellence, as displayed by Ayrton Senna) is how they won titles with different teams.

We can’t yet know if Verstappen’s tale will include this achievement. And Alonso’s, so far, doesn’t either. But what makes F1’s relentless veteran stand apart is the miracle season that was 2012. It was his masterpiece. If 2023 was Verstappen’s, then 2025 may yet be another in a different key — topping even 2021 and 2024. Soon, F1 will know if there is a different kind of glorious championship ending, too.

(Illustration: Demetrius Robinson / The Athletic; top photos: Mark Thompson/Getty Images)

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