Max Verstappen has confirmed that he won’t use the same ‘games’ he deployed against Lewis Hamilton during his 2021 title fight to beat Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in 2025. The Red Bull driver shifted the pressure onto the McLaren duo, declaring that they will be more ‘nervous’ than him during the run-in.
The 2021 title fight was one of the most intense in modern F1 history, and with the on-track margins between Verstappen and Hamilton being so small, Red Bull and Mercedes resorted to subtle mind games and marginal gains to swing the battle.
In 2025, however, the title battle has been a different story altogether. Until the last couple of race weekends, Verstappen was seemingly out of the fight, on spurred on by an unexpected mid-season revival that has seen him win three and finish second twice during the last five Grands Prix.
Most importantly, the Dutchman is driving without pressure, while the ever-shrinking point advantage is looming over Piastri and his McLaren team-mate. Despite the high stakes, though, Verstappen does not plan to pull out all of the tools in his locker.
“That’s hard for me to say,” he told De Telegraaf. “Back then, that was also the game I played a bit. Will I do that again? I don’t need to. Back then, I’d never won a world title. And now I have a few, and they (McLaren drivers) don’t. And at this stage, you’re naturally more nervous if you haven’t become world champion yet than if you already have those titles.”
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Heading into the Mexican Grand Prix this weekend, Verstappen is 40 points behind Piastri, who has registered just one trip to the podium in the last four race weekends. However, early signs are that McLaren should be strong in terms of race pace at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez on Sunday.
Asked if he thinks Andrea Stella’s squad are holding their breath with five rounds of the season remaining, Verstappen continued: “It’s fine to put a little pressure on, right? My mentality remains the same, and I know everything has to be perfect until the very end. We’re going to try.
“If we make it, it’ll be incredible. If not, well, no. I’m not going to sit in a corner and cry. You have to analyse what went wrong. That’s very clear: the first fourteen races of this season have been that. But the fact that we’re still in the race is very special, and actually a victory in itself.”