Can a driver with a 52-point lead with six rounds of a Formula 1 season remaining really not be considered the favourite to win the world championship?
To many F1 observers, the Dutchman’s current points pile and cracking capabilities combine to make him unstoppable in 2024. This is regardless of how good McLaren and Lando Norris were in winning commandingly in Singapore last time out, or the fact that Max Verstappen and Red Bull haven’t won since Spain in June.
But Verstappen’s position remains precarious.
For a start, the momentum is firmly with McLaren now. When you add Norris’s similarly crushing Zandvoort win to what he achieved in Singapore (and surely should’ve done at Monza), that’s two from the last four races in 2024’s mini-post-summer break phase of the campaign where the title chaser has delivered wins worthy of Verstappen’s brilliant start to this season.
Verstappen hopes – saying in Singapore that “we are moving in the right direction now”– that Red Bull is over the worst of the car problems that have held it back really since Miami in early May. But even if the work the team has been putting in of late does draw it back level with McLaren around an eagerly anticipated Austin upgrade package, Verstappen is still at risk of just a single DNF blowing this title fight wide open given how many races there are still to come at this stage.
Verstappen’s record in these – Austin, Mexico, Brazil, Las Vegas, Qatar and Abu Dhabi – is, overall, formidable.
At both the Circuit of the Americas and the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez, Verstappen is undefeated since they rejoined the F1 calendar after the COVID-19 pandemic. His wins at these tracks in 2021 were critical in eventually winning his first world title that year.
Podium: Race winner Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing
Photo by: Red Bull Content Pool
His past is chequered in Brazil. He has two Interlagos wins, but this is also a track where he lost a certain victory in that bizarre clash with Esteban Ocon in 2018, then in 2021 Hamilton roared back (boosted by a fresh engine but still with more to lose in a collision from his grid penalty recovery) and famously won.
The next year, any hope Verstappen had of winning in spite of Red Bull’s tyre trouble was undone in another crash with Hamilton, before his refusal to help Sergio Perez over minor places played out late on.
He has a 50:50 record in Qatar – losing to Hamilton in 2021 before winning on the…
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