Karun Chandhok: Verstappen is in the fight for a fifth F1 championship

With the F1 circus rolling into Europe, there have already been so many interesting storylines developing through the field in the first third of this season. The biggest overall story, of course, revolves around the driver’s world championship battle and as I write this on the flight to the Monaco Grand Prix, Max Verstappen has kept himself in contention with another brilliant victory that looked unlikely on Friday evening in Imola.

In the early part of 2025, the reigning world champion looked close to the McLarens or even ahead in qualifying at pretty much every weekend but Imola was the first time this year that he has seemed slightly quicker over the longer run during the grand prix. The papaya cars have been very kind to their tyres and this has helped them rack up results even if Verstappen had the upper hand with track position as was the case in Miami. But ominously for Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri, once Max pulled off that brilliant move around the outside into the Tamburello chicane to take the lead, they had no way of fighting back on pure pace.

“The Red Bull man has this Schumacher-like ability to deliver performance”

We’ve seen over the past three seasons that if Verstappen gets a sniff of a chance, he won’t think twice to capitalise and Oscar’s body language after the race told the story of how he knew he had opened the door unnecessarily easily for Max – amusingly, George Russell had a rant about it on the radio even before they got to the next corner! The Red Bull man also has this Schumacher-like ability to metronomically deliver performance, lap after lap, without making mistakes and he demonstrated that ability to good effect again.

You get the feeling that Verstappen has maximised the points-scoring opportunities that the Red Bull has offered him this year whereas Lando has had several qualifying sessions where he hasn’t delivered the performances expected of him and made things harder for himself on a Sunday. Oscar went off in tricky conditions on slicks in Melbourne (forgiveable in the circumstances), made a small error in qualifying in Japan which cost track position and then opened the door in Imola. The McLaren Hail Mary strategy of a two-stopper didn’t really work and cost him second place to rub salt into the wound.

Ferrari has had a broadly disappointing start to 2025. In a season where the team was hoping to build on its constructors’ title challenge last year, it has generally been the fourth-fastest car. The rumour mill suggests an issue with the rear suspension design isn’t allowing it to run the car in the optimum ride height window and it could take until Silverstone to resolve that. But it’s been a strange run of form for the Scuderia with that amazing sprint qualifying and sprint race for Lewis in China now a distant memory. In Imola, neither driver seemed to be able to unlock the performance from the tyres in qualifying, yet in the race, their pace seemed strong – in certain phases even comparable to the leaders which was encouraging, confusing and frustrating all at the same time.

The shuffling of the young drivers has also been a big talking point, with Liam Lawson and Jack Doohan on the receiving end of brutal calls from their team bosses. Lawson was cut loose from the main Red Bull team early and has since been overshadowed by Isack Hadjar who is having an outstanding season at Racing Bulls. The move to swap Doohan for Franco Colapinto seemed harsh on the Aussie. Jack has shown flashes of speed that matched Pierre Gasly, been a bit unlucky making the odd rookie error. He deserved more time on merit but it appears like commercial considerations led to Franco getting the seat.

The Argentine driver did a good job as a stand-in at Williams last year but his opening weekend for Alpine in Imola didn’t seem like a step up from what Doohan was delivering so I wonder how this is going to unfold if there isn’t a big upturn in form. Alpine is a factory team, representing one of the largest automotive alliances on the planet, yet the wave of seven team bosses in five years doesn’t scream of a stable environment in the way that Mercedes or McLaren have shown to be key to success.