Jos Verstappen casts doubt on Max Verstappen's prospects to win the title in 2025

Max Verstappen's father, Jos Verstappen, has cast doubt on the driver's prospects to win the title in 2025 owing to Red Bull's late-year form. The 2024 F1 season was an interesting one where the Austrian team was at its dominant best at the start of the season. Things, however, did start taking a turn for the worse as the season progressed.

The major point that completely shifted the momentum was the Miami upgrade brought by McLaren, which shot the team to the top in terms of performance. From that point onwards, the Red Bull continued to regress, making it hard for Max Verstappen to stay competitive against the likes of Lando Norris and others.

It took a lot of methodical driving from Max Verstappen, where he had to change his approach to focusing just on scoring the maximum possible points from every weekend and pulling off some brilliant races, like the one in Brazil that helped him clinch the title with a few races to spare.

At the end of the season, while Red Bull was able to hold on to the drivers title with Max Verstappen, the constructors' championship was lost to McLaren. The Austrian team didn't have the fastest car on the grid by consensus, and heading into 2025, Jos Verstappen thinks that would be a concern. In conversation with F1-Insider, when questioned about the prospects of his son's fifth title, the Dutchman was skeptical as he said:

"I'm a little doubtful. Red Bull needs to build a car that is more predictable in all conditions. Looking at the second half of 2024, you can't be optimistic. Red Bull just hasn't managed to make the car consistently fast, so why should that be the case this year?"

Max Verstappen's team reeling from losing Adrian Newey

Red Bull also saw a major loss of key personnel as well, with Adrian Newey leaving the team midway through the season, among others. Jos Verstappen was questioned on whether he felt that the designer's departure played a role in the car being slower. He replied in the affirmative as he believes that the team had not improved the car since the wizard left. He said:

"I think so. As for Newey: It is a fact that the car did not improve when he left the team. In particular, the updates no longer worked as intended. I have talked enough about the reasons why the team is in danger of falling apart. Let's leave it at that. One thing is certain: Red Bull has a big task ahead of it in 2025."

Max Verstappen is going into the 2025 F1 season chasing his fifth consecutive title, and if he's able to accomplish it, he would level Michael Schumacher, becoming only the second driver to win five in a row.