Like Lewis Hamilton & Mercedes, Max Verstappen’s Inevitable Exploits Touted to Deteriorate F1 as the FIA Urged to Take Urgent Steps

After Sebastian Vettel‘s 4-year onslaught, Mercedes rose like a phoenix in the hybrid engine era. However, their domination too turned F1 into a one-sided competition. That created a sense of resentment in the fans who wanted to watch a challenger rise against their might. 2021 gave us exactly that in the form of Max Verstappen. Since then, neither he nor Red Bull has looked back and has established a dominance that even Lewis Hamilton and Mercedes arguably couldn’t. Is F1 again returning to that “boring” phase where the fans resent the champion?

Until 2016, Hamilton faced tough competition from his own teammate Nico Rosberg. Given the cars Mercedes was producing back then, the duo was each other’s only competition. However, things often got out of hand when they started to crash into each other. While that made for great entertainment for fans, the situation was unacceptable to the team’s management. That tiny bit of challenge went away when the German driver retired and Valtteri Bottas, his replacement, gladly played second fiddle to Hamilton for 5 years.

Is F1 getting boring because of Max Verstappen?

Currently, Verstappen is in the same boat as Hamilton once was. Whatever little challenge he is facing is courtesy of his teammate Sergio Perez. The Dutchman broke that perception as well in Miami recently where he won comfortably against Perez despite starting in P9. Many found the race to be boring as the Mexican driver couldn’t pose much of a threat to his partner despite being the pole sitter.

Discussing the situation in a recent episode of The VF1 Show, podcast host VF Castro said, “If you can’t beat Max, then you’re going to have to improve other things because otherwise, you’re going to have the Mercedes effect. For 7 years, people were so tired of Mercedes by the time Max won his first. Regardless of how you feel about the end of that race (2021 Abu Dhabi GP), people were excited to have another champion. And that’s all it came down to and now people are upset because Max keeps dominating.”

“It’s like, what do you want? So, they’ve got to figure something out because I see a lot of fans getting bored. I know there are people who are not even watching races anymore, and that’s also concerning.”

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The Miami GP did turn out to be a dud affair. Celebrities and athletes attending the event caught more headlines than the actual race itself.

When will Verstappen and Red Bull’s dominance end?

Going by the latest trends in F1, every time the FIA introduces a new batch of big upgrades, one team ends up acing them while others struggle to cope with them. Hybrid engine regulations played into Mercedes’ hands and now the ground-effect regulations are doing it for Red Bull.

That being said, Adrian Newey and Co did enough in 2021 to deliver a car that gave their ace campaigner enough firepower to challenge Hamilton. Unless Mercedes, Ferrari, Aston Martin, or any other team turns up with a massive upgrade, the Milton-Keynes-based team will continue undisputed on its purple patch.

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Otherwise, we will have to wait for 2026 when new engine regulations will come into play. However, even that does not guarantee a rise in competition. Red Bull has already signed a deal with Ford to manufacture engines starting from the 2026 season. Surely they have started to work on it already.