“I just want to win.”
Biography
Last updated after the Brazilian Grand Prix.
By the Numbers
Career Timeline
Recent Form
Verstappen has put together one of the more striking sequences of the season across the last five races. Three wins, a third and a second place from those five outings. That’s 108 points from a possible 130, with a fastest lap bonus included. The only blemish, if it can be called that, is the P3 in Austin, where he started from the front row and finished just off the top step.
The trajectory is sharply upward. A driver who spent the early part of his career at Toro Rosso before moving to Red Bull in 2017 has accumulated 74 career wins across 253 starts and right now he’s producing the kind of form that made those numbers possible. The championship fight is alive and this run of results is the reason why.
Latest Race
Verstappen finished P2 at the Brazilian Grand Prix, starting from P21 on the grid. Gaining 19 positions to score 18 points from the back of the field is a significant result in any context and in a tight championship fight it could prove decisive.
2026 So Far
Verstappen sits P2 in the drivers’ championship with 279 points and the direction over the last month has been firmly upward. Three wins from his last five races have kept him in contention after what must have been a more difficult earlier stretch of the season. A driver in his twelfth season with Red Bull, carrying 74 career wins into this campaign, is producing the sort of late-season surge that makes him a genuine threat to whoever leads the standings.
Latest News
Verstappen charges from 21st to second in Brazil
Max Verstappen has made a habit of pulling off remarkable recovery drives at Interlagos, and the 2026 Brazilian Grand Prix added another chapter to that run. For the third consecutive year he produced a stunning charge through the field in São Paulo: he won from 17th on the grid in 2024, came from the pitlane to the podium in 2025 and this time around converted a 21st-place start into a second-place finish. The result was described as a night-and-day turnaround in terms of car performance relative to qualifying, though Verstappen himself admitted he needs to work out exactly why the Red Bull felt so different in race trim. His start wasn’t clean either, which he acknowledged openly after the chequered flag. Still, the sheer consistency of these Brazilian recoveries is striking. Three years, three different scenarios, three top-three results. Whatever the grid slot, Verstappen finds a way to make Interlagos work for him. The bigger question for the team is whether they can carry any understanding of Sunday’s pace improvement into future weekends, because if the car can genuinely perform at that level it raises real questions about why qualifying continues to be such a struggle. Second place in Brazil won’t define a championship on its own but it keeps Verstappen in the conversation and adds another entry to what is becoming one of the more unusual personal records in recent F1 history.
Verstappen gifts race helmet to departing Red Bull mechanic
Max Verstappen marked the end of the São Paulo Grand Prix weekend with a personal gesture towards Ole Schack, a Red Bull mechanic who attended his final race with the team at Interlagos after more than two decades of service. Schack has been part of the Red Bull setup since the team’s debut season in 2005 and has worked as a front-end mechanic on Verstappen’s car throughout their time together. Verstappen handed Schack one of his race helmets as a farewell gift, a gesture that carries obvious weight given how closely the two would have worked across race weekends. Red Bull also produced a one-off personalised can of their energy drink featuring a record of Schack’s career highlights with the team. It’s a rare public glimpse into the human side of a garage that’s spent the last few years dominating the sport, and it says something about the culture Verstappen operates in that he chose to mark the occasion this way. Schack’s tenure covers the full arc of Red Bull’s rise from new entrants to the most successful team of the hybrid era and beyond, and his departure closes a chapter that stretches back well before Verstappen even held a racing licence.
Verstappen reflects on Antonelli's record-breaking title win
Max Verstappen was in a relaxed mood after the Mexico Grand Prix when asked to compare himself to Kimi Antonelli, who has just become Formula 1’s youngest-ever world champion at 20 years old. Verstappen’s response was characteristically dry: the key difference between the two of them at that age, he said, is that Antonelli speaks Italian. It’s a throwaway line but it tells you something about how Verstappen carries himself around a milestone that might sting others. Antonelli has taken the record from Sebastian Vettel, who had already indicated at Monza that he’d be perfectly happy to see the young Mercedes driver claim it. Verstappen himself became world champion young, so he’s well placed to put Antonelli’s achievement in context rather than feel threatened by the comparison. The superlicence points system as it currently stands makes it extremely difficult for any future driver to go even younger than Antonelli has managed, which gives the record some real staying power. Verstappen’s joke lands because it sidesteps the whole conversation about legacy and records with a shrug, which is very much his style. He’s a four-time champion with nothing to prove on that front and the Mexico weekend gave him another opportunity to show that he can engage with the broader story of the sport without it becoming about him.
Verstappen profits as Ferrari's internal battle backfires
Max Verstappen was handed a significant gift at the Mexican Grand Prix when Ferrari teammates Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc collided on the opening lap, and Verstappen himself has acknowledged that the incident played directly into his hands. The pair made contact at Turn 4 on lap one, with both cars running wide and losing ground at a critical early stage of the race. That moment of chaos between the two Ferrari drivers gave Verstappen the breathing room he needed to take the lead and ultimately secure the win, extending his advantage in the championship standings. Hamilton has since confirmed that Leclerc tends to race him harder than drivers from other teams do, and Ferrari’s management has admitted the team still needs to sit down and clarify its internal rules of engagement before situations like this repeat themselves. From Verstappen’s perspective it was a clean afternoon’s work built on a foundation he didn’t have to construct himself. Red Bull will be well aware that Ferrari’s inability to manage its own driver pairing is as valuable to them as any upgrade package, and with the title fight still alive Verstappen won’t be complaining about receiving free points courtesy of Maranello’s internal friction. The incident adds another chapter to what has been a complicated dynamic between Hamilton and Leclerc since Hamilton’s high-profile move to Ferrari, and it’s a dynamic that Verstappen and Red Bull will be watching with considerable interest as the season heads towards its conclusion.