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Three races in, Max Verstappen has twelve points and sits ninth in the world championship. By his own exceptional standards, that is not a slow start to a season. It is the worst start he has had in a decade.
The Results So Far
The sequence reads poorly. A crash in qualifying in Australia followed by a recovery drive to sixth. Zero points from China after an early retirement. Eighth place in Japan. He has not finished in the top five in any of the three races, which for a driver who has won four consecutive world championships is a number that does not fit the surrounding narrative easily.
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To find a worse start to a season, you have to go back to 2015, when Verstappen was a teenager making his Formula 1 debut with Toro Rosso. He scored six points from the first three races that year. The following year, already at Red Bull, he had thirteen. Everything since then has been a progression upward, and mostly far upward.
The Context Makes It Even More Striking
What makes the current points tally even more damaging is that scoring opportunities have multiplied since 2015. Sprint races now add extra points weekends, and the fastest lap bonus that existed in earlier seasons also contributed to totals. The current regulations give drivers more chances to accumulate points than they did in Verstappen's early career. He is managing to score fewer anyway.
It is worth being clear about the reasons. Red Bull are running their own power unit for the first time in the team's history, the new regulations have arrived at the worst possible moment for their development programme, and they are genuinely the fourth-fastest team. These are not excuses. They are facts. The situation is not mainly a Verstappen problem.
The Season Is Far From Over
Nineteen races remain. The development pace in Formula 1 under a new regulations set is often rapid in the early months, and Red Bull have the engineering resources to close gaps. Verstappen has also shown before that he can rescue a season from an unpromising start. The last time he failed to finish in the championship top ten was his debut year, and the last time he finished outside the top three was 2018. The pattern of his career suggests he finds a way. Whether the 2026 Red Bull will give him the tools to do it again is the question nobody inside the team can answer with confidence right now.
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