Ecclestone says his money is still on Verstappen for fifth F1 title

Former F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone says his money is still on Red Bull’s Max Verstappen to win the Formula One championship this year for the fifth year in a row.

Such a feat of five successive championships has only been achieved previously by Michael Schumacher with Ferrari from 2000-2004. The German also won two titles with Benetton in 1994 and 1995.

The 2025 season is expected to be closer than ever, after four teams and seven drivers won races last year.

“I’m pleased in lots of ways that it (the championship) is open in the way that it is, and it’s good,” Ecclestone, 94, told Reuters by telephone from Switzerland on Friday.

“I still think Max will win.

“There’s no reason why he shouldn’t. If he’s got the equipment, obviously there’d be no discussion about him. It would be a definite.

Red Bull's Max Verstappen during testing. File/Reuters

“If the car’s up to it, he’ll get the job done.”

The season starts in Australia on March 16 and the race in Melbourne could see a change at the top for the first time since May 2022, with Verstappen having led the championship for more than 1,000 days.

Red Bull lost their constructors’ title to McLaren last season but Verstappen, the clear Red Bull number one, finished comfortably clear of McLaren’s runner-up Lando Norris in the standings.

Norris is the bookmakers’ favourite to succeed this time, with Red Bull doing the least mileage of any team in Bahrain testing and looking like they had ground to make up.

Verstappen has a new teammate this year with New Zealander Liam Lawson replacing Sergio Perez after the Mexican’s form plunged in 2024.

“You’d have to obviously think McLaren and I’d like to see Ferrari win,” said Ecclestone, who felt Charles Leclerc had more of a chance than new teammate and seven times world champion Lewis Hamilton.

“He’s been there all the way through so they are hardly going to dump him for Lewis,” he said of the Monegasque.

“I’m not saying Lewis isn’t possible, just that they will not stop looking after and hoping Leclerc’s going to get the job done.”

Ecclestone said he would be very surprised if Hamilton’s Mercedes replacement, 18-year-old Italian Andrea Kimi Antonelli, won a race this season.

Hamilton had an astonishing 2007 debut with McLaren, standing on the podium for his first nine races and taking two wins before ending the year as overall runner-up.

Meanwhile, Hamilton felt the force of the Ferrari fans as he and teammate Charles Leclerc sped around Milan’s Piazza Castello on Thursday before heading to Australia for the start of the Formula One season.

Some 35,000 “tifosi” thronged the event, presented by Ferrari sponsor Unicredit, as seven-times world champion Hamilton performed smoking tyre burnouts after filling the city streets with noise.

Hamilton drove a 2021 SF21 car while Leclerc was at the wheel of an SF90, the car in which he won his first race for the team in 2019, with both running at the same time and passing each other.

Agencies