Max Verstappen: Profile, Championships, Racing Style & more

bet365 News Team Updated: 27 Feb 25 10:21

Max Verstappen is one of the best F1 drivers of all time and the four-time world champion has the ability to add more silverware to his collection in the years to come.

Verstappen has dominated F1 in recent years, winning his world titles consecutively from 2021-2024.

Formula 1

View Latest Odds

Born	30th September 1997
Current team	Red Bull Racing
Previous team(s)	Toro Rosso
F1 debut	2015 Australian Grand Prix
F1 titles	4 (2021, 2022, 2023, 2024)

Max Verstappen’s career so far

Biography

Max Verstappen has a great motor racing pedigree as his father, Jos, is a former F1 driver who started 106 races for seven teams between 1994 and 2003. His mother, Sophie Kumpen, was a successful kart racer.

Journey to F1

Verstappen showed promise from an early age, having begun to race karts when aged just four. He won his first title in 2005 and won Dutch and Belgian championships before moving up to European and world level. In 2013, aged 15, he became the first karter to win two European titles and a world title in the same season.

Verstappen moved into single-seater car racing in 2014 and finished third in the European Formula 3 championship with 10 wins in 33 races. His performances that season saw him fast-tracked into F1 at the age of just 17.

F1 career to date

Toro Rosso

Verstappen set an F1 record when the starting lights went out for his first race as he became the youngest driver ever to start a race in the 2015 Australian Grand Prix, aged just 17 years and 166 days.

He qualified 11th but failed to finish the race due to engine trouble. Two weeks later, he became the youngest driver to score points in F1 when he was seventh in the Malaysian Grand Prix.

Partnering Carlos Sainz Jr., he picked up two fourth places for the Red Bull-backed team that season, finishing 12th in the championship with 49 points.

He remained at Toro Rosso for the start of the 2016 campaign and finished sixth in Bahrain, but took part in only four races before he was promoted to the main Red Bull team in a switch with Russian driver Daniil Kvyat.

Red Bull

Verstappen made a sensational debut for Red Bull, winning the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix and becoming F1's youngest race winner at 18. It was his only victory that season, but four runner-up finishes helped him claim fifth place in the championship, scoring 204 points.

He finished sixth, fourth, third and third in the following four seasons. Red Bull had been gaining ground on the previously dominant Mercedes team, and the pair fought a fierce battle in 2021, resulting in one of the most controversial finishes to a season in the sport's history.

With nine race wins, Verstappen began the final race of the season level with Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton on 369.5 points, but he looked set to be denied when the reigning seven-time champion had a healthy lead heading into the closing laps.

However, a late safety-car period enabled the second-placed Verstappen to close up behind leader Hamilton, albeit with five lapped cars between them.

Race director Michael Masi controversially allowed those cars to unlap themselves (but not the other lapped cars in the field), and with the benefit of much fresher tyres, Verstappen overtook Hamilton on the sole lap after the restart to win his first world championship.

While his first success will always carry an asterisk in the minds of some F1 fans, there was no doubt about his dominant victories over the next two seasons as the Red Bull car proved to be a class above Mercedes and Ferrari.

Verstappen won 15 races in 2022 and an incredible 19 in 2023, but his latest world title proved harder to come by as a new rival emerged in McLaren's Lando Norris.

Red Bull began the 2024 campaign with the fastest car and Verstappen won seven of the first 10 races to forge into a clear lead. However, he then went 10 races without a win, and McLaren, Ferrari, and Mercedes all picked up their pace and secured victories.

While Norris showed promise, Red Bull eventually made progress with their car to help Verstappen claim his fourth successive title.

Max Verstappen F1 Records

Among Verstappen's numerous F1 records are:

Youngest driver to start a race, score points, lead a lap, podium finish, win a race and record a fastest lap.
Most wins in a season (19 in 2023)
Most consecutive wins (10)
Most sprint race wins (11)
Most consecutive poles (8, jointly with Ayrton Senna)
Most podium finishes in a season (21 in 2023)
Most points in a season (575 in 2023)
Most laps led in a season (1003 in 2023)
Most races led in a season (20 in2023)

Max Verstappen best races

Even the most fervent Norris fan could not deny that Verstappen's season-changing victory in the 2024 Brazilian Grand Prix was a fantastic effort.

Starting 17th on the grid with his title rival on pole, Verstappen was in the lead shortly after the halfway point and went on to win by almost 20 seconds in a masterful drive.

Another amazing drive from a low grid spot saw him win the 2022 Belgian Grand Prix from 14th at the outset, leading by lap 18 and winning by a wide margin.

Before his first title, Verstappen had shown his potential with an excellent drive to win the 2018 Mexican Grand Prix by a wide margin from second on the grid, while in 2019, he ended Mercedes' eight-race winning streak with his success in the Austrian Grand Prix despite falling from second to seventh on the first lap, snatching first place with a strong move on the penultimate lap.

Max Verstappen best seasons & World Championship wins

Verstappen won the world championship in 2021, 2022, 2023 and 2024 with points totals of 395.5, 454, 575 and 437 points.

Max Verstappen nationality

Verstappen identifies as being from the Netherlands and competes as a Dutch driver.

Where is Max Verstappen from?

Verstappen was born in Hasselt, Belgium, and his mother is Belgian, but he races under the flag of the Netherlands, as his father did.

Max Verstappen net worth

Max Verstappen's net worth is estimated to be in excess of £200 million, with only Fernando Alonso and Lewis Hamilton on the current grid having accumulated more wealth in their much longer careers.

Max Verstappen racing style

Max Verstappen is a rare driving talent with a preference for an oversteering car that is set up on the verge of instability. He has the ability to control this situation, enabling him to turn into corners faster and exit them faster.

He is an excellent qualifier with the ability to put together a long sequence of fast laps in a race. Many race fans would say his weakness is his over-aggressive attitude when racing closely with a rival, which has often led to notable incidents with Lewis Hamilton and Norris in particular.

Thoughts on Verstappen's racing style

"He's just quick. Max has kind of not got an area where you can really find an edge"

Alex Albon (Williams driver)

"He's got the most phenomenal ability, but with that, the determination and tenacity and racing intelligence, the way he reads the race, the way he reads the tyres, the way he understands the set-up of the car. I've never seen that in any other driver."

Christian Horner (Red Bull Racing team principal)

"Max is probably the best in the world at what he does. I'm avoiding collisions - a lot of things that we've done could have easily been turned into worse things, like bigger crashes."

Lando Norris (McLaren driver)