Many of his other great performances since 2022 have been aided by Red Bull’s superior car performance, such as in Hungary, where in 2023 he won by a 34sec margin, and in Belgium, where in 2022 he won from 14th on the grid and led by 17sec at the chequered flag.
But even when he’s not sat in the fastest car on the grid, Verstappen’s unforgiving, win at-all-cost driving style has made the difference. This has been felt first-hand by Lando Norris in 2024 who, despite having a faster car than the Dutchman for much of the current campaign, has not displayed the same unrelenting drive to win.
The Mexico City GP was a prime example. Knowing only Norris, in the quicker McLaren, could derail his championship chances, Verstappen forced him off the road twice in the same lap, keeping his rival behind him. Verstappen later received a hefty penalty but it delayed Norris just enough to deny him the chance of fighting Carlos Sainz for victory. He had to settle for second.
Only Lewis Hamilton has really been able to match Verstappen’s level of driving aggression and desire to win — resulting in the sensational battle for the drivers’ championship in 2021. But the Dutchman has since proven he can take it a step further, and refuses to be defeated — no matter what the rulebook says.
“You are there to win,” Verstappen told media in 2022. “I don’t care how you do it as long as you cross the line. And yes sometimes you have to be a jerk for that. That’s just the way it is.”
Verstappen has never been concerned with driving like a “jerk”
McLaren
Of course, Verstappen’s success, much like Jordan’s, is not all his own doing.
The latter had the legendary Phil Jackson as his head coach, and had Scottie Pippen and Dennis Rodman as team-mates — all of whom would later be entered into the Naismith Basketball Hall of Fame, which marks the greatest players in the game’s history.
The status of men and women aiding Verstappen’s title ambitions has been very similar: with Christian Horner as his Red Bull team boss, Adrian Newey (who has 14 F1 world titles to his own name) as his car designer, Gianpiero Lambiase as his race engineer, Jonathan Wheatley as his sporting director and Hannah Schmitz as his head strategist.
All of them fight just as hard and as ruthlessly as he does, as we saw throughout Red Bull’s heated title battle with Mercedes in 2021, in which Wheatley and Horner shared several hostile exchanges with F1 race director Michael Masi as they fought in Verstappen’s corner.
Victory is all that matters at Red Bull, and the results speak for themselves.
So when will the Dutchman’s dominant reign come to an end? Well if Jordan’s basketball career provides any indication, the answer to that question may be solely up to him.
Could Verstappen soon grow tired of F1’s politics?
Eric Alonso / DPPI
After winning his third consecutive title in 1993, Jordan figured he had accomplished all he needed to in basketball and duly retired to go and play professional baseball, ‘allowing’ the Huston Rockets to win NBA titles in 1994 and 1995.
It’s possible Verstappen could take a similar view.
He’s made no secret of his intent to race in another series outside of Formula 1, and has been largely unconvinced by the upcoming regulation changes — which will see major changes to hybrid power units as well as active aerodynamics.
Should he decide to retire before then, his departure could be the only way Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc or George Russell are ‘allowed’ to win F1 world titles of their own.
Of course, that may not be the end of Verstappen’s F1 story. Jordan did return to the Chicago Bulls in 1996 and resumed his position at the top of the mountain: winning another three world titles on the bounce before retiring again at the end of 1998. Verstappen is certainly young and capable enough to pull off a similarly miraculous feat.