LAS VEGAS — It was somehow fitting that Max Verstappen clinched this season’s title with a fifth-place finish in Las Vegas. A podium appearance may have been a more satisfying way to crown Formula 1‘s latest four-time world champion, but this was a title campaign characterised by guts as much as it was by glory.
It was also a title campaign with a very different feeling to his previous three.
Nothing will match the sheer drama of his battle of the ages with Lewis Hamilton in 2021, while the relative ease of his second and third titles (two seasons in which he took 34 victories from 44 races) felt like the emergence of an unstoppable force. But in 2024, Verstappen faced a very different challenge — one that tested him to the limit and, at times, revealed the true extent of his competitive nature for better and worse. In some respects, he had to dig deeper than he had before, and for almost half the season, accept that individual race victories would not be possible.
Off track, Red Bull’s season kicked off in a cloud of controversy as team principal Christian Horner faced accusations of inappropriate behaviour from a female colleague. Horner denied…
