How Max Verstappen Can Beat a Wounded McLaren for the 2025 F1 Title

In the Monza GP that Max Verstappen went on to win, he said, no risk and full push. For him to win this 2025 championship, it's going to have to be all risk and full push. And while that was a joking line, it's definitely no joke to say Max Verstappen has been the best driver in 2025 and honestly has defied the odds so many times this season. The pressure is mainly on Lando, but of course there is some on Max. But like every amazing athlete and like some of the greats in other sports, Max Verstappen is like Kobe Bryant in basketball when it came to those clutch moments, hitting the shot when it needed to be in and taking over the game. Novak Djokovic in tennis. Another example of somebody that has the coldest mindset, goes against the crowd and still pulls out a victory. And Tom Brady in football. All three of these athletes remind me so much of Max, who kind of started in a position where they weren't very liked by the public, but as they've came later into their career, showed how amazing they were. More people have learned to love him and Max is gaining that attraction in 2025 just based off the fact that he's made this season entertaining. And it looks like it's going to go down to the wire in Abu Dhabi, but can he actually do it? That's what we're going to talk about today. If you're new here, go ahead and subscribe. It means a lot for the channel. We're very close to a hundred K. Thank you all for the support. Let's get started with the video. I made a video talking about the last six races of the season and whether or not Max can get close enough, because it's kind of been up and down on whether he's in the fight. He's not now he's truly in it. If a couple of things happen and in that video, I've been pretty much correct with the exception of Brazil. If they had the correct setup, I would have been correct, but we know what Max Verstappen thinks of ifs. Regardless, a couple of things have changed, and this could play a big factor in the last two GPs of our season, including that sprint. Obviously, this double DSQ is going to put a lot of pressure on McLaren to capitalize in these last two GPs, even if they look like tracks that should suit that extremely strong car. With them lowering their ride heights and getting disqualified for the whole plank hit, the team is going to want to take no risk in these last two GPs, and that could mean them actually raising the ride height a little bit and losing a little bit of pace. Qatar, notoriously pretty bumpy, has that long straight where there are some bumps, but in general, a pretty high speed track, and it's going to be a mandatory two stop. So the cars will be pushing at their max, meaning every car will be lifted a little bit higher and there will be no tire preservation. I believe this to be a Red Bull advantage, especially when you have Max, who when he's pushing to the max, like Max, nobody has a chance. I fully believe right now he's in the zone. Lando is pretty close, and he's been very good mentality wise as of lately, maybe cracked a little bit there in Las Vegas, but I don't think it was necessarily the bad move to make. It was just cold, and he can't really pull over stopping on Verstappen. Regardless, on this track, I do believe it to be a Red Bull track, especially in the hands of Max. They ended up winning it in 2023, where the McLaren was extremely strong in high speed corners. But yet again, that was the RB19, the most dominant car of all time, and he made it look pretty easy. Same thing there. It was a two stop mandatory, so it was full push the whole race. Every driver was covered in sweat, but that's what actually made it pretty entertaining. I hope we get something similar like that. It was a lot of overtaking that made it fun. Now, in 2024, that car was all over the place, and Max, yet again, won in Qatar. He likes his track. He's really strong in those high speed corners. Maybe the McLaren can be a little bit stronger in sector one, but I can see them pulling it off in sector two and three, and they have good straight line speeds that will help with defending as well, even if the McLaren cars have the tire preservation, which should not play a big factor in this GP. If you include possibly the ride height going up, then maybe there really is a case for Red Bull to win this in a pretty easy fashion. Now, the next GP, upcoming Abu Dhabi, that's going to be a tricky track for Red Bull to win. While it is slightly bumpy, not as much as Qatar and definitely not as much as Vegas, the track doesn't have as many strengths for the RB car as Qatar and even Vegas has. Sector one can be okay with the high speed corner and some straights included kind of that sector two, but sector three, I believe to be a very strong part of the track for the McLaren car. I think this is going to be fully reliant on McLaren making a mistake. It's going to be a two stop race, a lot of tire degradation and for Red Bull to come out a victor, especially in the hands of Max Verstappen. Maybe if Yuki Tsunoda was able to qualify high enough, do a crazy strategy, defend for a little bit, kind of reminiscent of 2021, then I could see this possibly happening, but Abu Dhabi is going to be very tricky and I think luck is going to have to be a factor for the Red Bull car to win here. It's just not the greatest track for that car. In 24, they struggled a lot. In 25, we've seen this car go up and down Mexico, Brazil, where the setup lets them down sometimes in qualifying or the race. And even if they're perfect here in Abu Dhabi, I think McLaren on an okay weekend can still be the winning car, unfortunately for Max Verstappen. But with that said, there are a couple more things to keep in mind. I've talked about Max in this video in the McLaren car, but not Lando himself. In this season, something I got to respect with Lando is he's lost points, not due to his own merits. Canada, of course, that mistake was crucial and not a good one to make, but he's battled back from his own struggles in the season, a mechanical DNF in Zandvoort, and now this DSQ, which is just down to McLaren as a team, making a big mistake and making a championship that should have been pretty easy for them as a team, much harder. And honestly, to me, if he can hold on, not crack under pressure, it's a career-defining moment for Lando. If he wins this championship, it'll be pretty deserved. He did what he needed to do in Vegas, but the team let him down. For Oscar, he's just out of it mentally. I could see him being a factor here in Qatar, and that could help because yet again, I haven't really brought it up in the video, but if Lando outscores Max Verstappen in the Qatar weekend by two points, which just means one position difference in reality, if it's a first or second or even a second and a third, that would be it for Max because then it's impossible to make that comeback. And looking at the latest GPs, it's highly likely he will outscore Oscar by two points in this last stretch of our season. For Max, it's insane to think that we were at some point looking at whether he was going to have his apparent exit clause be activated and him go to Mercedes, to now fighting for the championship, going down to the wire in 2025, and it's really crazy to think that that Spain incident is going to cost him so much. That was a 10-point difference that he lost there. The gap would have been 14 right now, and he would have had a big chance for victory. Max is going to look back at that and be very disappointed in himself. That is by far the biggest mistake he's made in this season. And while he did spin in Silverstone, that was kind of down to the team having no wing, he still made up a lot of positions and kind of came back in the race. Spain was just a mental mistake, which he'll look back to and hopefully learn to never do something, I would say, immature like that again. But even including that mistake, what a season it's been for Max. I do think he can do it, but it's going to require luck. I feel like that's been something that's been talked about so much in this season, but a 24-point gap is a 24-point gap. There's two GPs and a sprint. Somewhere in there, Lando's going to have to finish out of the top five, and hopefully with some luck that happens in Qatar. That would be Max's best opportunity to win his FIZ championship, which would be historic. I mean, this would cement this guy by far as the best of all time, if not already the best of all time. But I'd love to hear your thoughts down in the comments below. What a season it's been. I did not expect this. It went from a pretty mild and boring season to quite the opening with his DSQ yet again. This last half of the season, it's been Max Verstappen, defying the odds and us enjoying some nice Formula 1. Leave your thoughts down below. Please hit like, subscribe. It'll mean the world, and peace.