Juan Pablo Montoya names Max Verstappen’s closest rival in F1 right now

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Max Verstappen has enjoyed 18 months of comfortably winning F1 races unchallenged, but that has all changed in the last few weeks.

The Red Bull driver started off the season where he left off in Bahrain having won by over 20 seconds from teammate Sergio Perez, but those margins closed as the field started to converge.

Verstappen’s last race win that was over 10 seconds was the Chinese Grand Prix, which featured Lando Norris finishing second 13 seconds behind.

Norris would later go on to take his debut win at the next race in Miami, followed by close races in Imola, Canada, and Spain. In each of these cases, Verstappen’s win margin has been an average of three seconds, a far cry from when he started the season.

McLaren appears to have produced the quickest car after narrowly missing out on three victories, but former F1 driver Juan Pablo Montoya believes Verstappen’s closest rival could emerge from another team when speaking on W Radio Columbia.

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Juan Pablo Montoya believes Mercedes drivers are Max Verstappen’s closest rivals

Mercedes has won two out of the last three races in F1, with their recent victory at Silverstone coming on merit while George Russell lucked into the win at Austria following a collision between Verstappen and Norris fighting for the lead.

The victory at Silverstone for Lewis Hamilton was a record ninth at the British circuit and showed just how far the team has come since its winless 2023 season, having also secured a front-row lockout.

Montoya believes Mercedes could now be the closest challenger for Verstappen, reigniting the titanic title battle between the two teams from 2021.

“Before Silverstone, I would have said Lando Norris. But now after it could be Lewis or George. The fight will happen between them and it will be a bit of an internal fight in Mercedes,” said Montoya.

“If the new upgrades come, they may be given to both of them or given to only one driver. It happened this year, there were already a couple of races where Russell’s car had new things and Hamilton did not. They want to win the championship at any cost.”

Mercedes has identified key car problems after Red Bull breaks ‘golden rule’

Part of the reason why Red Bull is starting to become under pressure is down to their recent upgrades failing to bring the performance they expected, having brought its sixth major upgrade to the floor of the RB20.

Journalist Michael Schmidt believes Red Bull broke the ‘golden rule’ of the ground effect F1 cars by adding downforce at the expense of aerodynamic stability, which is causing them to take steps back in their development.

Red Bull is also hit with a handicap in the regulations, whereby teams are restricted in the amount of hours they can run their wind tunnel and Computational Fluid Dynamics simulations. This impacts the rate of car development and could see Mercedes, McLaren and Ferrari close the gap even more before the summer break.

Mercedes technical director James Allison said their new front wing brought to Canada addressed one of the key problems with their car. Initially, only Russell received the new parts before Hamilton had them fitted at the following race, owing to the risk of taking a penalty if they crashed and needed a change in specification.

Both drivers will likely want to ensure they have the latest upgrades on their cars, although the team might favour Russell due to Hamilton’s impending move to Ferrari next season.