Verstappen’s victory in Sepang should serve as a warning to Red Bull’s rivals | Giles Richards

The importance for Max Verstappen of emerging triumphant from the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia was writ large in the Dutchman’s pleasure at finally being able to drive a competitive car. In a ride with which he was comfortable and able to take to a dominant victory for Red Bull, Verstappen was in his element. With it came a sense of what might have been had he not been long out of the championship fight, but also what might be to come next year.

The transformation was so marked because for so long this season the car has been a handful – the reason Verstappen’s title hopes faded long ago. That the team have come back to deliver a win in such emphatic fashion was no little achievement.

In the opening period of the season, the RB22 was nowhere, deficient in almost every department. It lacked pace, balance, even consistency and for all his skill Verstappen seemed powerless. He described it as feeling like a passenger in the car at times.

The four-time world champion wrestled it to a couple of podiums in the first half of the season but it was a sisyphean task. “At the start of the season, I really had weekends where I would turn the steering wheel and strange things would happen,” he said. Which, a rather understated critique, belies the fact that the last place a driver wants to be is in a car where he is unsure which way it is going to jump.

Red Bull, under Laurent Mekies, stuck at it and brought major upgrades to Miami and Austria. Yet the scale of what needed doing across so many facets of the car remained difficult to overcome. Only a month ago Verstappen could only qualify sixth at Monza, admittedly a power track where the relative paucity of their electrical energy deployment was a hindrance. It nonetheless suggested a win was as far away as ever.

Yet there were indications that each incremental development was bringing a greater understanding of the car and how to coax the best out of it. In Madrid, Verstappen qualified only just over a tenth off pole and had real pace in the race, which might have delivered more on another track where overtaking was possible. At the next round in Baku, Red Bull brought their final upgrade, including a development to the floor. In qualifying Verstappen was unlucky with yellow flags to start from eighth but in the race the car was rapid. He flew through the field, chasing the winner, Mercedes’ George Russell, to the flag right on his gearbox.

The car’s speed on the straights was noted by rivals, not least Mercedes, as Verstappen closed on Russell. Verstappen’s teammate Isack Hadjar, who had spent three races out with a wrist injury, felt like he had been given a new ride. “I definitely feel like I jumped in a car that’s way better than when I left it in Budapest,” he said.

What followed in Sepang was validation that Red Bull really had got it right. Verstappen took pole and won with a drive that exemplified his car’s improvements. The RB22 was quicker in a straight line than the Mercedes and fast in the medium and high-speed corners, its achilles heel this season.

On a track punishing to the tyres, the car was well-balanced, less damaging to the rubber, allowing better energy deployment. Having addressed problems which conflated with one another, the car coalesced into a more coherent whole. Verstappen described the process as having “pushed weaknesses out of the car”. It has taken them 16 meetings but on this form Red Bull are finally up with McLaren, Ferrari and Mercedes.

Their progress stands as testament to a team working collectively to tremendous effect. It is an achievement that must be acknowledged alongside building their own engine for the first time and delivering a win; a feat that is recognised across the paddock as perhaps beyond expectations and which was far from guaranteed to be successful as Honda, with more experience , have demonstrated all too clearly this season.

There may have been an element of the win in Sepang being track-specific. The fact that the Mercedes upgrades deployed there did not deliver at all was a factor, and they must contend with Russell starting the Singapore Grand Prix from the back the grid following an engine change after a late retirement in Malaysia. But the Red Bull is a different car now and how it performs on the streets of Singapore this weekend will be telling.

Verstappen will want more wins, but it is instructive how he and the team are viewing these final meetings. They want to end strongly and feed every possible piece of information into next year’s car, Hadjar explained. “We have to try all the things, make all the mistakes now and do all the learning to arrive in 2027 ready to roll and start on high,” he said. It is an ambition which will not be lost on their rivals, who know only too well how formidable Red Bull can be if they are quick out of the blocks.