Will Buxton’s fascinating 2021 prediction of who would be Max Verstappen’s current Red Bull teammate

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A lot has changed in Formula 1 from the 2021 season, with some of the biggest moves in the modern era of Formula 1 happening in between the intense title fight of that season and now.

Max Verstappen has emerged as a four-time world champion for starters, winning every championship since the highly contested battle that took him and Lewis Hamilton to the final lap of the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix for it to be decided, a lap in which Jos Verstappen loves to reminisce.

Hamilton is in a car which doesn’t house a Mercedes engine for the first time in his career, as well, following a move to Ferrari, announced at the beginning of 2024, that would have been dismissed as total nonsense by anyone in 2021.

A swathe of new circuits have joined the calendar as well, with Miami and Las Vegas being welcomed to the now 24-race schedule, as well as circuits such as Sochi, Portimao and Istanbul all leaving it.

READ MORE: Every driver to race for Red Bull in Formula 1, ranked

Will Buxton predicted that Lando Norris would partner Max Verstappen at Red Bull in 2025

During the summer break of the 2021 season, journalist Will Buxton made a ‘just-for-fun’ list of predictions for Formula1.com for how he thinks the F1 grid would line up in the 2025 season.

The biggest surprise in terms of teammate pairing comes in the form of Lando Norris partnering Verstappen at Red Bull.

Buxton guessed that the Austrian constructor would ‘lure’ Norris away from his papaya family in an eye-watering deal to link up with Verstappen and trade drivers’ championships until 2025.

As it happens, we didn’t quite get the Verstappen-Norris partnership, but we did get somewhat of a title fight between the two drivers in 2024.

Of course, the Dutchman came out on top with mistakes severely costing Norris valuable points.

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Oscar Piastri is the main name omitted from Will Buxton’s prediction for the 2025 F1 season

Norris’ McLaren teammate Oscar Piastri is the main name to be omitted from the 20-driver list that Buxton submitted in 2021.

At the time of writing, the Australian was in the midst of his Formula 2 winning season with Prema and fresh off the back of his feat in the 2020 F3 championship.

Taking up reserve driver duties with Alpine during the 2022 season, a contract saga between Alpine and McLaren ensued, with the Woking-based racing outfit ending up on the winning side.

The team principal of Alpine at the time, Otmar Szafnauer, later admitted that it was Alpine’s fault that the current championship leader fell out of their grasp due to the fact that they hadn’t actually signed a contract with him prior to their announcement.

You’d probably have had more of a chance of winning the lottery than being able to correctly predict an F1 grid four years in advance.

Other than Buxton’s prediction that Verstappen would stay at Red Bull, only Charles Leclerc at Ferrari and George Russell at Mercedes are the other two predictions of his that came to fruition. It certainly wasn’t a bad guess, all things considered.