Max Verstappen become Formual One fans’ driver of the year despite missing the championship title.
Verstappen may have lost the world championship to Lando Norris, but RaceFans readers again voted him their Driver of the Year.
As per the outlet, the Red Bull driver won more grands prix than anyone else in 2025. He sat 104 points off the lead with nine grands prix and three sprint races remaining, and recovered all but two.
Verstappen scored his first victory of the season in the Japanese Grand Prix, where he narrowly out-qualified the McLaren drivers to take pole position and lead them home.
His second win came at Imola, where he brilliantly passed Oscar Piastri at the start and led the field home.
He endured a lean summer as Red Bull struggled to make their RB21 work at several circuits. But following a series of updates they managed to hit its set-up sweet spot much more consistently and he reached the podium in all of the final 10 rounds, six of which he won.
It may not have been enough to continue his run of world championship titles but RaceFans 55.8% of readers nonetheless voted him their Driver of the Year.
Verstappen won by a wide margin: he received over three times as many votes as Norris, who came second in the poll. Norris’s McLaren team mate Oscar Piastri came third.
Noatbly, this is not the first time our readers have picked someone other than the world champion as their Driver of the Year.
This last happened in 2016, when Daniel Ricciardo finished third in the championship but won the end-of-year poll.
