Jos Verstappen has expressed his concerns over Red Bull’s ability to produce a title-winning car for his son in 2025 in the wake of the struggles endured by the team’s RB20 design last year.
While Max secured his fourth consecutive title in 2024, the season was marked by a mid-season dip in performance that has left Jos “a little doubtful” about the bulls’ prospects for next season.
Verstappen dominated the early stages of the 2024 campaign, winning seven of the first 10 races.
However, Red Bull’s mid-season form dropped significantly, with the Dutchman securing only two victories in the second half of the year.
According to Red Bull team principal Christian Horner, the RB20’s decline was rooted in an update introduced around the Imola Grand Prix, which made the car more difficult to drive and especially much less consistent.
“I think we’ve got a good understanding of development-wise where things weren’t,” Horner explained, quoted by RACER.
“I would say around Imola we introduced an upgrade that made the car far more peaky in its performance, and it had a very narrow operating window.
“When you got it into that window — the four straight laps in Austria, for example, that were all good enough for pole — it was very much in that window.
“If you stepped a millimeter either side of it, it became much more of a problematic car to drive, which Max was able to mask and drive around, and I think that’s what hurt Checo [Perez] particularly — it’s that window was so narrow.”
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The challenge, Horner said, lay in broadening the car’s operating window to make it more adaptable to different tracks and conditions.
“And so I think what the engineers have been very much focused on over the winter is how you broaden that window,” he continued.
“Not necessarily adding ultimate performance but just broadening the window so that you’ve got, across the different challenges and circuits that we visit, a much wider operating window.”
Horner cited Verstappen’s performance in Qatar — where the Dutchman claimed pole position and victory — as evidence of progress.
“The turnaround that we had in Qatar and the pole and the victory, again showing that, I think, we’re on the right trajectory,” Horner said. “But none of the competitors will be standing still, and you can’t take anything for granted. But I think we’ve started to understand some of the issues with the car.”
Despite Horner’s optimism, Jos Verstappen remains skeptical that Red Bull can resolve its issues over the winter.
“I still have some doubts about that,” Verstappen Sr told F1 Insider. “Red Bull has to build a car that is easier to predict in all conditions.
“If you look at the second half of 2024, you can’t be optimistic. Red Bull simply hasn’t managed to make the car consistently fast. So why should that be the case this year?”
Off-track turmoil also marked Red Bull’s 2024 season, as the team launched an internal investigation centered around Horner, which led to high-profile departures, including design guru Adrian Newey and sporting director Jonathan Wheatley.
Jos Verstappen pointed to Newey’s exit as a factor in Red Bull’s struggles.
“As far as Newey is concerned, it’s a fact that the car didn’t improve when he left the team,” he said. “The updates in particular no longer worked as desired.
“I’ve 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.”
Despite Red Bull’s inconsistencies, Verstappen Sr. lauded his son’s ability to extract the maximum from his car under difficult circumstances.
“He was extremely good in 2023,” he recalled. “But of course, 2024 was more difficult for him because the car wasn’t the best in the field and he therefore always had to drive at the limit.
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“Without making any mistakes. He did that extremely well.
“He has always given 100 percent. But this year it was more noticeable. People noticed that Max can make the difference compared to others.”
As the new season approaches, Red Bull faces a critical test: to deliver a car that can match the consistency and adaptability of its rivals.
With reigning Constructors’ Champions McLaren and an ever-improving Ferrari in the mix, the competition will be fierce.
For Jos Verstappen, the stakes couldn’t be higher. While he remains confident in his son’s ability to perform under pressure, he knows that Max cannot shoulder the burden of success alone.
Red Bull must rise to the challenge if they hope to reclaim their dominance in Formula 1.
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