Red Bull<\/a> unlocking the consistency of the RB21 after the first half of the season hinted at inherent performance in the car, with wins at Imola and Suzuka.<\/p>\nWith six wins from the last nine races, it was a huge momentum shift after just two victories in the first 15.<\/p>\n
According to team boss Laurent Mekies, who took over from Christian Horner in the role during the summer, he witnessed something special from Verstappen, but said it\u2019s in the eye of the observer as to whether F1 2025 was, in fact, the Red Bull driver\u2019s best season performance.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s you guys [the media] that are here to judge how historical a season is compared to the others,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it\u2019s probably fair to say that the world discovered an even more extraordinary Max this season after his fourth world title.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bit because of the magnitude of the comeback. A bit because he has been so relaxed, so well seated in the team. Embracing so much that challenge with the right spirit.<\/p>\n
\u201cA bit also because we have seen him racing elsewhere. I think it has all taken a bit of a part of our heart when we have seen him spending his free weekends being a new dad, racing with GT cars around the world.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut for sure, in terms of whatever happens next, the scale of the comeback is something that hopefully will go in a few history books.\u201d<\/p>\n
While Verstappen\u2019s comeback eventually fell two points shy of completing the seemingly impossible, the Dutch driver spoke at length about his pride in the team after the chequered flag in Abu Dhabi.<\/p>\n
Despite having produced such stellar seasons such as his dominant 2023 title win, Verstappen reckons he has been at a higher level this year.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think so,\u201d he said in response to a question from PlanetF1.com about whether 2025 is the best he\u2019s ever driven.<\/p>\n
\u201cI have no regrets about my season. I think the performance has been strong. I\u2019ve hated this car at times, but I\u2019ve also loved it at times.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I always tried to extract the most from it, even in the difficult weekends that we\u2019ve had. But it\u2019s been, like I said before, a proper rollercoaster with the car.<\/p>\n
\u201cLuckily, the last eight, nine rounds in general have been a lot more enjoyable. And also, in the team, we have a great atmosphere at the moment.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re really on a roll \u2014 positive energy, belief, confidence \u2014 and that\u2019s exactly what you want heading into next year.\u201d<\/p>\n
Despite having ultimately lost out, Verstappen said he has finished the year with more pride than some of his title victories.<\/p>\n
\u201cAt the end of the day, of course, it\u2019s always nicer to win it,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut, honestly, I\u2019m sitting here now with probably a better feeling than what I had last year at this time because the second half of last year was pretty tricky at times as well.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo, we have been struggling for, I would say, a year \u2014 the second half of last year and the first half of this year. But I actually feel a lot better now.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course, shame to miss out on the title, but at the same time, for a long period of time, I was not even thinking about the title.<\/p>\n
\u201cI never felt like I was in it until a few rounds ago. That\u2019s pretty crazy.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut you take your pride in different ways. I\u2019m happy with myself, and going into next year I\u2019m not in a state of having to worry about my skills or whatever. So I feel good.\u201d<\/p>\n
Of course, Verstappen\u2019s performance uptick coincided with Red Bull unlocking more performance consistency from the RB21, helped by continuous development and the introduction of refinements and tweaks throughout the latter half of the year.<\/p>\n
While there will be an opportunity cost to this at the start of F1 2026, Mekies has previously explained the logic behind this as being a necessity for Red Bull to gain a better understanding of its development processes and the correlation between its simulation data and the real world.<\/p>\n
This real-world turnaround has been \u201csensational,\u201d said Mekies. \u201cAnd the girls and the guys back at home should be proud of what has been achieved.<\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t think it happened very often in the last few years or decades, and that\u2019s what we look at.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt allows us to go into the winter with a level of confidence in our tools, our methodologies, and our approaches. That is important.<\/p>\n
\u201cSome of that will be able to carry on to next year\u2019s regulations. Some of that will become less relevant, and I don\u2019t think we should go into making the list of the circumstances and where we could have found these two points.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe will probably do it internally in a way that we learn from the mistakes we make, but we don\u2019t have to wait for the end of the championship to do that. We always do it.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut the two points could be everywhere. What is important is that we, as a group, turned around things in the way that was done, and all the credit should go to the different departments.\u201d<\/p>\n
Read Next:\u00a0Practice session changes and wet-weather controls revealed in new FIA documents<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen\u2019s narrow title defeat came behind the wheel of an inconsistent Red Bull, but was 2025 his…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":347731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[573],"tags":[64,63,817,813,816,818,14758,825,44,17165,918,85],"class_list":["post-347730","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-home-page","tag-laurent-mekies","tag-max-verstappen","tag-news","tag-popular","tag-red-bull","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=347730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/347730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/347731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=347730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=347730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=347730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}