For three years, Max Verstappen was the avalanche. Every race weekend felt inevitable—Red Bull rolled downhill, and everyone else was buried. In 2025, the script has flipped. McLaren are the ones with unstoppable momentum, and Verstappen is left shoving the boulder uphill, hoping brute force will be enough.
The numbers tell the story: Verstappen sits a distant third in the standings, trailing the papaya duo by almost 100 points. He’s still performing miracles—dragging a shaky Red Bull to podiums it probably doesn’t deserve—but miracles don’t win championships when the car has no answers. For once, sheer talent isn’t enough to bridge the gap.
Watching Verstappen this year is like watching a gladiator fight without armor. The aggression is there, the speed is there, but the machinery isn’t. He can’t bully McLaren into mistakes, can’t outthink them on strategy, can’t simply rely on the old Red Bull dominance to carry him through. And that’s the uncomfortable truth: Verstappen looks human again.
None of this is his fault, and maybe that makes it even stranger. This isn’t the champion losing his edge; it’s the team around him crumbling. But Formula 1 is a cruel place—history won’t remember the excuses, only the results. Unless Red Bull finds a miracle of their own, Verstappen’s 2025 will be remembered not as a fight for the crown, but as the season where the boulder rolled back down the hill.
