The moment Max Verstappen racing career nearly ended before Red Bull Formula 1 success

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Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen is on the cusp of winning a fourth consecutive world championship this year.

Lando Norris has been slowly catching Max Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship but his 52-point lead with six Grand Prix remaining should be enough to hold the young Brit off.

It’s an incredible record and one only matched by the likes of Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton, Sebastian Vettel and Juan Manuel Fangio.

Red Bull may not be confident yet that Verstappen can complete the job as McLaren have overtaken them both in the championship and in terms of overall performance.

READ MORE: Everything you need to know about Red Bull Racing from engine to Ford links

The United States Grand Prix is where Red Bull hope to be competitive again, but whether the car is the quickest on the grid or not, Verstappen will extract the maximum performance.

However, his and Red Bull’s recent history could have been very different were it not for a unique set of circumstances.

Speaking on The Race Podcast, Dutch commentator Nelson Valkenburg shared a story about Verstappen’s early racing career.

Verstappen’s potential was clear during his days in karting, but he never had the funding to spend a long time climbing up the ranks in single-seater cars before reaching F1.

Valkenburg has now shared the story of the point in Verstappen’s career when he was entering his last year in racing if he wasn’t picked up by an F1 team.

While Mercedes wanted to sign a young Verstappen, it was Red Bull who eventually secured his signature and the rest is history.

The moment Max Verstappen was one year away from his racing career ending

Talking about the difficulty many young drivers face climbing the racing ladder, journalist Edd Straw said: “You can argue if it works okay economically and if the cream does rise, then it’s okay. Max Verstappen made it to Formula One. And you could argue, oh, he always would have done because of the ability level.”

Valkenburg then replied: “But I don’t agree with that. Max Verstappen had one year of F3 because basically, there was a budget for one year of F3 and they really needed to be picked up.

“They used, I think every avenue, they had a lot of support midway through the season also from some sponsorship in the Netherlands.

READ MORE: Red Bull driver Max Verstappen’s life outside F1 from net worth to girlfriend

“But I don’t believe they would have had the budget to move to GP2 or F2 at that point and pay for it themselves if they needed to.

“It was, I think, win or bust for Max in hindsight. We all know what happened. But it was a gamble, a huge gamble.

“And Jos believed so much in Max that he knew he was going to do it. He prepared him incredibly well for it, spent a lot of his own money preparing him to hit the track running.

“But I don’t believe if Red Bull or Mercedes hadn’t picked him up, he would have been able to get the budget to shine and we would have lost one of the talents in F1 through no fault of his own.”

Max Verstappen predicted to leave Red Bull before the end of the 2025 F1 season

Verstappen’s only single-seater season before F1 saw him race in the European F3 Championship saw him and finish third behind current Alpine driver Esteban Ocon and Tom Blonqvist, who briefly drove in IndyCar this year.

However, Red Bull saw enough potential in the 27-year-old to not only offer him a test with Toro Rosso that year but a full-time race seat in 2025.

It wasn’t long before he was promoted to the senior Red Bull team and won on his debut at the Spanish Grand Prix.

Verstappen has now reached a point where he expects to be in a championship-winning car every season.

Jeroen Bleekemolen has predicted Verstappen could leave Red Bull next year should they fail to live up to his expectations.

Verstappen has no interest in hanging around in F1 forever and will want to achieve his goals as quickly as possible before moving on to his next project.

That may mean leaving the team that saved his racing career after helping them complete the most dominant season in the history of Formula 1 last year.