Helmut Marko identifies clear moment where Red Bull may have cost Max Verstappen the 2025 F1 title

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Max Verstappen is now just days away from possibly becoming a five-time F1 drivers’ champion, but he may yet pay the price for the mistakes Red Bull have made in 2025.

The 28-year-old will go into the 2025 season-closing Abu Dhabi Grand Prix with a 12-point deficit to McLaren rival Lando Norris atop the F1 drivers’ standings. It is the smallest margin to the top that Verstappen has faced since round five out of 24 in Saudi Arabia back in April.

Verstappen also fell to a 104-point deficit to Oscar Piastri atop the championship through 15 rounds, as he left his home race at Zandvoort more than four Grand Prix wins adrift. Norris’ retirement from the Dutch GP in August gave Verstappen P2, with 70 points between them.

Helmut Marko rues Red Bull’s error with Max Verstappen’s Hungarian Grand Prix set-up

Red Bull have seen Verstappen produce a meteoric comeback thanks to outscoring Piastri in every round since the Dutch GP, and Norris over six of the eight events. He also gained from Piastri’s misery in Azerbaijan and, especially, McLaren’s double disqualification in Las Vegas.

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But motorsport adviser Helmut Marko concedes that Red Bull have also made a number of “mistakes” that may now cost Verstappen the 2025 F1 drivers’ title. He especially points to how they got his set-up so wrong for the Hungarian Grand Prix back in round 14 in August.

“[Verstappen has] benefited from the mistakes of our competitors,” Marko has outlined to Kleine Zeitung. “Unfortunately, we’ve also made mistakes ourselves from time to time, for example with the set-up in Hungary and the like. But it’s already been an incredible season.”

Max Verstappen, Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri have all endured regrettable moments in 2025

Verstappen had his worst on-track weekend of the 2025 F1 season thus far at the Hungarian GP, when he only qualified P8 and finished the race in P9. Norris won the Hungarian GP with a 72.645-second gap over Verstappen, and he lapped every driver behind the Red Bull racer.

Red Bull got Verstappen’s set-up terribly wrong in Hungary, and the 28-year-old struggled for grip all weekend. Such were his woes in Budapest that week that Verstappen feared Red Bull would not win another race, but their continued updates avoided his fears coming true.

READ MORE: Who is Red Bull motorsport adviser Helmut Marko? Everything to know

The Hungarian GP is not his worst result this season, as Verstappen’s penalty for driving into George Russell in Spain dropped him from P5 to P10. Also, Mercedes’ second driver Andrea Kimi Antonelli crashed into Verstappen in the Austrian GP, which ensured they both retired.

So, Verstappen has also endured his fair share of misfortune through the first 23/24 rounds of the 2025 F1 season to head into the Abu Dhabi GP trailing Norris by 12 points and ahead of Piastri by just four points. But McLaren, no doubt, have a lot of moments they will regret.

Piastri crashed out of the Azerbaijan GP on a weekend he will wish never happened, after he also crashed in Q3 and jumped the start of the race. He will also regret spinning whilst P2 in the Australian GP, in which he rescued P9, plus crashing into Norris in the F1 Sprint at COTA.

McLaren also saw Norris retire after crashing into Piastri in the Canadian GP, for his only real blunder during a race so far in the 2025 F1 season. Norris has also made a number of costly errors in qualifying sessions, including in China, Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Azerbaijan and Qatar.