Swap places and we'd be looking at an orange-clad F1 world champion, says Verstappen
Mark Thompson/Getty via Red Bull
This is a thought exercise. Not a definitive claim.
After the season Max Verstappen has just put together, and in the afterglow of having clinched the championship a few minutes earlier, we can probably indulge him his post-race Vegas comments about how he might have fared had he been driving a McLaren or Ferrari this year.
Talking to the Dutch media and enjoying a post-race beer, he said he believed he’d have clinched the title earlier had he been in either one of those cars. “The Mercedes, no. I think that would have been trickier.”
It was off-the-cuff, said in a moment of elated release and untypical; he’s not usually boastful. But was it true?
Predictably, Lando Norris didn’t think so. “No way. No-one has ever come back from the points gap I had before Miami.” That was race six, before which Norris – in what was definitely only the third-fastest car up to that time – had fallen 52 points behind Verstappen in the dominant Red Bull.
Another crushing win for Verstappen in China marked the end of Red Bull’s dominance in 2024
Lars Baron/Getty via Red Bull
The McLaren was dynamite in several subsequent races, it’s true. It’s also true that Norris and the team together lost several opportunities to fully exploit that speed. It’s true too that the Red Bull entered a very awkward phase of development mid-season which coincided with the McLaren’s purple patch. And that Verstappen did brilliantly well to secure better results than the car deserved during that time. Not to mention delivering one of those very special wet weather performances as his knock-out punch in Brazil.
Max Verstappen set his unerring sights on the task in hand in Vegas and was rewarded with an F1 title – Mark Hughes looks back on an uncannily similar performance over four decades ago at the same location
Of course the right driver has won the title. He was head and shoulders above the rest over the course of the season. But let’s look at the specifics of whether he might’ve won in the McLaren. Because there’s some recency bias in perceiving the McLaren as a faster car. As an average, the qualifying times over the season are incredibly close – the Red Bull actually faster by 0.07sec so far. This all pre-supposes that Lando Norris can drive a car comparably quickly to Verstappen. He’s made some astonishing qualifying laps this year and his pole in Barcelona was done in a car which at that time was no quicker than the Red Bull, slower in the fast corners, faster in the slow ones but over a lap, nothing in it. A lack of raw speed is not what has cost Norris.
So let’s put Verstappen in that McLaren and Norris in the Red Bull and then press play. Does Verstappen still take the title – and if so does he secure it earlier than he managed in the Red Bull?
Here’s a list of Norris’s lost opportunities and the points swing which resulted from each:
Verstappen not blowing any of those opportunities had he been given the McLaren would represent a 51-point swing in his favour (17 extra points for Max, 34 fewer for Lando).
Which provisionally would currently put Verstappen in the McLaren on 374 points and Norris in the Red Bull on 386. In which case, Verstappen in the McLaren would have a 12 point deficit to chase down in the final two races, with 60 available. Furthermore, two of those races Norris lost – Canada and Silverstone – were as a result of iffy calls from the pitwall. But let’s give Max the benefit of having GP still on his radio. In which case he wins them.
Pole-sitter Norris loses out to Verstappen in Spain
Chris Graythen/Getty via Red Bull
But could Norris have won all the races in the Red Bull that Verstappen did? Maybe not Brazil because that truly was a drive from the gods. But in the Red Bull’s dominant early-season form? Yes, without a doubt. Could he have won the start in Spain? Was that car or driver? Norris’ reactions were faster, Verstappen’s traction was better, so maybe yes. Miami and Imola, the McLaren’s trick new brake ducts were fantastic for looking after the front tyres and giving the car great late stint pace, but not good for giving adequate tyre temperature at the start of a qualifying lap. That’s the only reason Norris was behind Verstappen in those races (even though the safety car rescued him in Miami). Verstappen would have been similarly stymied. Could Max have done better than fourth in Monaco in a McLaren? Yes, probably. But it wasn’t a Ferrari/Leclerc beater around there.
So we can argue about the details, but fundamentally winning the title in the McLaren rather than a Red Bull would probably have been more difficult for Max, not easier. The Red Bull’s early season dominance was brief but decisive.
