How Losing Won Max Verstappen the Public Opinion Polls
Clinching a fourth title came after repeated blows, boosting the Dutch driver's appeal
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As a streak of navy blue crossing the checkered flag first became the norm throughout the 2023 Formula 1 season, the only thing that could slow down Max Verstappen was the consequences of his monotonous winning streak.
When Formula 1 first turned the Las Vegas Strip into a race track last November, a flurry of mainstream media took notice. The sport’s swift surge in the American zeitgeist had hit what looked like a peak, and many couldn’t help but anticipate an equally rapid descent. Vox argued that Formula 1’s fans were now tuning it out, best illustrated by the patchy grandstands lining the Strip, and Road & Track deemed the sport dead. All fingers pointed blame squarely on the then-26-year-old Dutch driver.
With six races left in 2023, Verstappen comfortably packed away the World Drivers’ Championship title after a sprint race in Qatar. By the time the season finale finished, he had won 19 of 22 grands prix, led the championship by 290 points and smashed record after record. Hitting a slump in 2023 with a 10 percent decrease in viewership over the season, Formula 1 was anticipated to drop even further. Bahrain’s 2024 season ribbon cutting left the sport’s new fanbase bored as they predicted a repeat Verstappen sweep: “This sport is actually gone,” one X (formerly Twitter) user said. Fatigued spectators were already second-guessing tuning in for 23 more races.
Then black smoke billowed out of Verstappen’s Red Bull in Melbourne.
In a Detroit Lions-themed bar on the Upper East Side, a crowd, distinctly devoid of Red Bull merchandise, screamed in ecstasy. The once-unbeatable world champion suddenly seemed easier to squash. Despite Verstappen sprinting to victory the following two races, Lando Norris’ papaya orange McLaren was closing in. The British driver’s Miami win, the first of his Formula 1 career, launched whispers of a title fight and marked the most-watched Formula 1 race in U.S. history, averaging 3.1 million viewers.
Norris, a fan favorite and routine winner of the viewer-voted Driver of the Day award, suddenly had the spotlight directed at his driving. And public opinion took a sharp U-turn. While Norris has won three races in 2024, he has made frequent mistakes and failed to convert his four pole positions into a win — losing the lead in the first lap of each race. Verstappen’s former, and current, teammates have experienced a similar fate: When scrutinized side-by-side, talented drivers like Daniel Ricciardo, Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and Checo Perez failed to perform to Verstappen’s benchmark.
Norris, who recently spoke about receiving online backlash, was no longer the baby-faced favorite. And Verstappen was seemingly no longer the villain: Lewis Hamilton fans took to social media to defend Verstappen, exclaiming that they couldn’t believe they were rooting for him over Norris in the championship. Friends and acquaintances deemed Verstappen “not so bad” and other drivers stepped up to publicly endorse his driving and off-track personality. Praise echoed throughout the paddock and seeped into public discourse after he drove from seventeenth to first in Brazil. It all felt like whiplash compared to the 2023 Miami Grand Prix when spectators booed and chanted “Fuck you, Max” from the grandstands.
Red Bull’s publicity approach this season has helped move the masses along, too, by showing a more personable side of Verstappen. “This is a British shorthair,” Verstappen says with a smile, proud of his correct answer and the green check mark accompanying it. The TikTok challenge of the day is “Name That Cat,” and he’s acing the test. “Still don’t understand how people put hate on Max,” one user commented.
When Formula 1 polled 167,302 fans in 2021, ahead of Verstappen’s controversial first championship win, the Dutch driver came out on top with 14.4 percent of the vote for favorite driver. Norris was the most popular with women under 24. Hamilton gained the most support in the UK and among audiences over 35. In the first half of the 2024 season, a poll with 2,300 respondents conducted by The Race found that Norris ranked number one. Fans voted Verstappen seventh, still raw from the mundane winning streak. There has not been an updated poll since.
He still faced a healthy dose of criticism throughout the season following illegal racing moves in Mexico and talking back to his race engineer in Hungary before crashing into Hamilton that same race weekend.
With two grands prix left in the 2024 season, Verstappen has won eight races. He secured the championship by 62 points last weekend in Las Vegas. His losses, however, speak louder than his wins — even as unprecedented a rain-slicked victory in São Paulo may have been. The races Verstappen didn’t win weren’t just good for his “brand,” but for the team and its bottom line.
Even before Red Bull’s car problems were on display, the racing team already dominated the conversation. Christian Horner, Red Bull’s team principal, was accused of inappropriate behavior towards an employee ahead of the season and later cleared of wrongdoing. In the following months, a string of high-ranking employees left the team, with rumors that Verstappen would follow. Red Bull seemed to be splitting at the seams. The team continued to make headlines but, more importantly, Verstappen received more airtime than last year. When his Red Bull stretched 30-some seconds ahead of the second-fastest driver in 2023, it was rare that Verstappen was shown on camera. His sponsors, paying for a prime advertising spot on the car, were also left alone, running a solo race that was not broadcast.
Whether Verstappen is well-liked or hated hasn’t seemed to faze him in the past. After he was booed in Miami, Verstappen responded with a casual, unaffected dismissal. “It’s something for me that is absolutely fine,” he said in the post-race press conference. “As long as I stand on the top of the podium that is the most important [thing]. I take the trophy home and they go back to their houses and they can have a nice evening.”
“I think if I would be driving in the back of the grid, nobody would do anything in terms of reaction — it’s normal when you are winning and they don’t like who is winning.”
Red Bull’s continued success remains under threat, with the team’s technical director saying he isn’t confident in the 2025 car despite Verstappen’s fourth title. Red Bull sits third in the World Constructors’ Championship standings behind McLaren and Ferrari.
Even if Red Bull’s car continues to flail, “The worrying thing for the grid is Max is improving every year,” Gianpiero Lambiase, Verstappen’s race engineer, said. His future victories, and losses, in a sub-par car will likely only make him more popular.
I've always found the Verstappen hate kind of odd. There's nothing really hateable about him, especially once he reigned in his more extreme driving tendencies, starting around 2020 or so. In 2016 there were grounds to hate Max Verstappen. By 2023 those were entirely gone, but people did it anyway.
He still doesn't like close competition very much, and will revert back to his more extreme driving tendencies when confronted with a real challenge. In this way, he reminds me of a team we would call a 'playoff choker' in a North American stick and ball sport, but in racing, where you can pull such a wide gap that you never find yourself under real pressure at any point, I don't think Max's tendency to crack when faced with real competition (much like Michael Schumacher's tendency to crack when faced with real competition) really matters, although I'm still sure at some point he's going to cause an airplane crash when involved in a close fight with somebody sometime, something that would either boost or tank his popularity forever, depending on who he gets into the crash with.
In sum, I like Max Verstappen. That doesn't mean it doesn't feel good to see other drivers win some of the time, but he was never going to kill the sport or do anything that any of the more extreme folk were saying he would. He does have a tendency to get into silly crashes sometimes, but other than that, I find him to be quite a likeable personality, and if he cares to stay around long enough to obliterate all the records, I don't think they could've gone to a more deserving guy.