Max Verstappen

Here’s the thing about Max Verstappen — the guy doesn’t just win races, he rewrites the record books while doing it. Four consecutive World Drivers’ Championships with Red Bull Racing, including that absolutely bonkers 2023 campaign where he took 19 of 22 races. If you’ve watched F1 at any point in the last five years, you already know: Verstappen is the standard everyone else is measured against.

What you might not know is just how early the signs were. He showed up on the grid in 2015 at 17 years old (seventeen!) with Toro Rosso, and by the time Red Bull promoted him in 2016, he’d already won the Spanish Grand Prix on debut with the senior team. Youngest-ever race winner. Since then, it’s been one shattered record after another — consecutive wins, points in a single season, the lot. The trajectory has been nothing short of ridiculous.

At the Australian Grand Prix, Verstappen has put together some genuinely impressive weekends. Albert Park’s high-speed sections and tricky technical corners play right into his hands — aggressive but surgically precise, that’s his whole deal. The Melbourne crowd obviously backs home favourite Oscar Piastri first, but there’s a deep respect for what Verstappen can do, and honestly his battles with rival drivers at Albert Park have given us some of the best modern moments the circuit has produced.

Career Statistics

Driver Profile

Max Verstappen is the undisputed alpha at Red Bull Racing, and he enters 2026 with something we haven’t seen from him in a while — a chip on his shoulder. He’s a four-time World Champion (2021–2024), but losing the title to Lando Norris in 2025 stung, and anyone who knows Verstappen knows that makes him more dangerous, not less. The new partnership with Liam Lawson brings fresh energy, and the 2026 regulations will test every driver’s adaptability. But here’s what I keep coming back to: this is a guy who finds a way to extract maximum performance from literally any car. Counting him out would be a mistake.

NC — Staff sports writer, australiafootball.com