It always seemed certain that 2021 would stand forever, alone and untouched, as Max Verstappen‘s greatest work.
How could it not be? The ferocity with which he took the fight to a champion of Lewis Hamilton’s stature, the poise with which he handled the biggest test of his career up to that point…
Even the most gifted drivers tend to wilt when they are exposed for the first time to the unique pressures and scrutiny of a title battle.
Max? He took to it as though his entire life had been building right up to that moment.
Which, of course, it had.
More so than any driver to have come before, in fact, such was the certainty from his earliest days that he was heading straight to the summit.
Forget, if you can, the way 2021 ended. It was the sheer nervelessness – that apparent immunity to pressure – that truly marked Verstappen’s first title triumph.
With the overall talent level so high in modern sport, that quality – of your technique remaining firm and accessible even in the most crucial moments – is of immense worth to an elite athlete.
It has been a very different, unique set of pressures he has been operating under in 2024, when those closest to him have sometimes seemed the greatest obstacle to even more success.
Having lost Adrian Newey and more along the way, and seen the RB20 rapidly fade from a position of such strength, Verstappen’s father Jos did not appear to be wrong when he warned that Red Bull, whose stability had previously been their biggest advantage, could “explode” this year.
The great trick pulled by Max, though, has been to make the blast happen in slow motion, holding back the tide just for long enough to seize a fourth World Championship, one to at least match – potentially surpass – 2021.
Yet like Sebastian Vettel, the only previous driver in F1 history to go from zero to four titles in a single great step, will the crowning glory also come to signal the end of an era?
Certainly, there was little chance of Verstappen sinking to his hands and knees in tribute to the RB20 at the end in Vegas as Vettel did so memorably with his dominant Red Bull back in 2013.
And if the car’s current vulnerability carries into next year, it is hard to envisage Verstappen and Red Bull repeating the feat without a 60-point headstart to play with in F1 2025.
Perhaps more than anything, though, this season has hit home what first occurred in the afterglow of his defeat of Hamilton three years ago.
As talented as Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Oscar Piastri, Andrea Kimi Antonelli and the rest might be, how are they ever meant to compete with this?
How will they ever close the gap in experience and title-winning nous Verstappen’s background, combined with his early start to life in F1 a decade ago, gifted him?
Without a clear car advantage – clearer even than that enjoyed (spurned) by Norris and McLaren this year – who could possibly outmanoeuvre, outsmart, outmuscle, outrace, outscore and ultimately overwhelm Verstappen across a full season?
Max, remember, was already winning grands prix with Red Bull when Norris and the rest of his peers were still navigating their way through the junior categories (recall that famous photograph of Verstappen meeting a young Lando half his size).
There has been more than a few occasions in 2024 when that has showed.
Unless the situation is taken out of his hands – either through circumstance or the competitiveness of his car – he is simply too advanced, too complete now to be toppled by a generation of drivers who, for all their own qualities, may never quite bridge the void.
He is, in other words, the closest thing to unbeatable F1 has ever seen.
