My Opinion; Max Verstappen is not a GOAT
Max Verstappen is a generational talent. He is aggressive, absurdly fast, mentally ruthless and statistically he is already one of the most successful drivers in Formula 1 history, with multiple world titles, dozens of wins and poles, and more than 100 podiums to his name.
But here is the uncomfortable part if you are a Max fan: I do not rate his championships and accolades in the same category as Lewis Hamilton’s. Not yet, and maybe not ever.
That is not about denying Verstappen’s talent. It is about context: how those titles were won, what kind of machinery and team structure sat underneath them, how the rules were applied around him, and what level of opposition he faced inside and outside his own garage.
Hamilton and Verstappen are both world champions. But the road Hamilton travelled, and the way Verstappen’s era has been shaped around him, make those achievements fundamentally different.
1. Championships Are Not All Created Equal
Let’s park the tribalism for a second and look at what each record actually represents.
Lewis Hamilton: 7 world championships (2008, 2014, 2015, 2017-2020), more wins, poles, podiums and points than any other driver in F1 history.
Max Verstappen: 4 world championships (2021-2024), 60+ wins, 40+ poles and well over 100 podiums already.
On raw numbers alone, Hamilton’s career is still towering over everyone. But this is not just a stats game. If we are talking legacy, “GOAT territory”, we have to talk about how those numbers came to be.
2. The Abu Dhabi Asterisk
You cannot honestly compare Hamilton and Verstappen without talking about Abu Dhabi 2021.
Hamilton dominated that race and, with a few laps to go, was on course to win both the Grand Prix and an eighth world title. Then came the safety car call everyone knows by heart.
The FIA’s own review later confirmed that the race director did not correctly apply the safety car procedure when he allowed only the lapped cars between Hamilton and Verstappen to unlap themselves and then restarted the race a lap earlier than the full procedure allowed. The governing body called it “human error”, changed the race control structure and rewrote parts of the process as a direct response, while still letting the result and championship stand.
None of that is Verstappen’s fault. He drove the season he was given and the lap he was given. But if we are talking legacies, it matters that one of his four titles was won in a race where the FIA itself admits its own rules were not applied correctly.
Compare that with Hamilton’s seven titles. You can hate Mercedes dominance all you like, but there is not a single season deciding race on his record where the rulebook had to be rewritten afterwards.
That does not mean “Max does not deserve anything”. It is simply why, for me, his first championship will always carry an asterisk in a way Hamilton’s do not.
3. When The Rules Bend: Stewarding, Cost Caps And Consequences
Abu Dhabi was not an isolated feeling. It was the climax of a season where the rules often felt like they were being stretched around Verstappen rather than applied consistently to everyone.
Take Brazil 2021. Verstappen ran both himself and Hamilton off at Turn 4 defending the lead. The stewards logged it, then decided there was no investigation necessary. Later, after new on board footage emerged, Mercedes asked for a right of review and that request was denied. Plenty of analysts called it a clear penalty that simply was not given.
Fast forward to Saudi Arabia the same year and you get the opposite problem: a messy race with multiple incidents, time penalties and a post race 10 second sanction for “erratic” braking in front of Hamilton. Verstappen still kept second place and the points that kept the title fight alive.
Layer on top of that the cost cap story. In 2022 the FIA confirmed that Red Bull had breached the 2021 financial regulations, overspending against the 145 million dollar limit. The breach was officially classed as “minor”, they paid a 7 million dollar fine and took a reduction in wind tunnel and CFD time, but the 2021 championship standings were untouched.
So in the same season that ended with a badly handled safety car restart, we now know the champion’s team also overspent the brand new cost cap and still kept the title. That combination matters if you care about how clean a record looks.
Individually, you can argue each decision. Collectively, it paints a picture: Verstappen’s first title sits at the crossroads of misapplied rules and a broken budget, with almost no meaningful sporting consequence applied after the fact.
4. The One Car Project In The Cost Cap Era
Now we get to the core of my argument: the team context behind the Verstappen era.
Under F1’s financial regulations, there is a hard cost cap, but within that limit teams are free to decide how to allocate their resources. There is nothing in the rules that forces equal treatment of both drivers in terms of development, personnel or strategic focus.
Red Bull have maximised that freedom by effectively building a one car project around Verstappen:
The car philosophy is tailored to his style: sharp front end, strong rotation on entry, with a rear that demands huge confidence and commitment.
Team mates cycle in and out, usually looking broken by the experience, while Verstappen’s side of the garage remains the fixed centre of gravity.
Even F1’s own coverage has described being Verstappen’s team mate as “daunting” and has repeatedly documented how comprehensively he has beaten every partner he has had.
Part of being a true number one is bending the team to your will. Schumacher did it at Ferrari. Hamilton did it at Mercedes. The difference here is the extremity. In a capped spend era, Red Bull have pushed almost everything toward one driver, with the second car primarily there to bank constructors’ points and occasionally play strategy chess.
Hamilton, for most of his career, lived in something different: a two car programme where his team mate was also expected to win races and fight for titles.
When people respond with “every top team backs a lead driver”, I think this is where the nuance gets lost. Yes, every great team trends toward one guy. Red Bull’s Verstappen era feels less like “lead driver” and more like “only project that really matters”.
5. Level Of Opposition: Inside And Outside The Garage
Look at the names across Hamilton’s career: Alonso, Button, Rosberg, Bottas, Russell. All race winners, some world champions, and almost all of them in fully competitive machinery at some point.
At McLaren, Hamilton debuted alongside a reigning double world champion, Fernando Alonso, and then took his first title in 2008 fighting Ferrari’s Felipe Massa and Kimi Räikkönen.
At Mercedes, he went through a civil war with Nico Rosberg, then held off Sebastian Vettel’s resurgent Ferrari challenge and, later, the wider field that formed up behind the hybrid era Mercedes juggernaut.
That constant internal and external pressure matters. It is much harder to build a dynasty when the other car in your own garage is allowed, and expected, to beat you.
Verstappen’s fiercest opposition has mostly come from outside his team: Ricciardo and Vettel in the early Red Bull days, Hamilton in 2021, and now McLaren and Ferrari. Inside his own garage, the imbalance has been brutal. Whether that is pure driver skill, car philosophy or team choice, the effect is the same: there has been no sustained, equal intra team threat in Verstappen’s championship years.
That does not invalidate his talent. But it absolutely changes how those titles feel compared with Hamilton’s, where beating the other car in the same colours was often half the battle.
6. Machinery, Newey And What Dominance Really Means
Hamilton’s Mercedes era was dominant, no argument there. But even the mighty W11 did not do what the RB19 did.
Red Bull’s 2023 RB19 won 21 of 22 races, the most dominant season a single car has ever delivered in F1. Technical coverage and race reports openly call it the most successful Formula 1 car in history by win percentage and laps led.
Now add the Adrian Newey factor. Newey designed or led the projects behind the dominant Williams and McLarens of the 1990s and the Red Bulls of the Vettel and Verstappen eras. His cars have taken double digit constructors’ titles, more than a dozen drivers’ titles and over 200 wins, and he is widely described as the greatest F1 designer of all time.
Every single one of Verstappen’s titles so far has come in a Red Bull shaped by Newey’s philosophy and overseen by a technical group built in his image.
Hamilton’s story is different. His titles came:
In two completely different regulation eras, V8 and hybrid.
With two different teams, McLaren and Mercedes.
In cars led by other technical groups, before and after Newey’s time at those organisations.
Newey’s champions list runs through Mansell, Prost, Hill, Villeneuve, Häkkinen, Vettel and Verstappen. Hamilton is not on that list because his titles were built without F1’s ultimate design cheat code bolted to the drawing board.
So when people flatten the conversation down to “they both had dominant cars”, that leaves out a huge part of the picture. Verstappen is doing his winning in the single most dominant package the sport has ever seen, built by the most successful designer the sport has ever seen, inside a structure tilted almost entirely toward one driver.
7. Longevity, Adaptability And The Hamilton Standard
Another reason I do not put Verstappen’s achievements at Hamilton’s level yet is simply time.
Hamilton has stood on an F1 podium in 18 consecutive seasons, an all time record. He has more than 5000 career points, 100 plus wins, over 200 podiums and 100 plus poles.
He has:
Won races in his rookie season and still been taking podiums almost two decades later.
Adapted to massive regulation shifts, different tyre suppliers, different engine formulas and now a late career move to Ferrari.
Verstappen is still in the middle chapters of his story. He might go on to match or even beat Hamilton’s raw numbers. But until he shows the same kind of multi era adaptability and stays razor sharp for as long as Hamilton has, it feels premature to talk about them as equal legacies.
Right now, Verstappen’s record looks like what it is: a brutally effective run of titles built around a one driver project in a cost cap era, including one championship that will always be tied to a misapplied rulebook and a breached budget.
8. So Where Does That Leave Max?
None of this is about pretending Verstappen is not great. You do not fluke four titles and that many wins. You do not humiliate team mates for a decade without being special.
But greatness in Formula 1 is about more than numbers on a page. It is about:
How you win.
Who you beat, including inside your own garage.
What kind of system and machinery is wrapped around you.
And whether those achievements still look clean when you zoom out and ask how the sport itself handled the rules.
For me, that is why Max Verstappen’s world championships and accolades live in a different conversation from Lewis Hamilton’s.
Hamilton has the numbers, the longevity and the ability to win across eras, teams and technical rulesets. Verstappen has a terrifying peak packaged inside a tightly focused, one car empire, plus one title that came out of the most controversial season and finale modern F1 has ever seen.
Maybe one day Max will close that gap. But until he proves he can do it outside the comfort zone of a team and a design god built almost entirely in his image, I am not putting his résumé on the same shelf as Hamilton’s.
Sources and further reading
FIA, “FIA release findings and recommendations after 2021 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix analysis” (executive summary of the Abu Dhabi investigation).
FIA / Formula 1, “Red Bull enter agreement with FIA over breach of 2021 financial regulations” and related coverage of the 2021 cost cap overspend.
Formula1.com, official driver pages and statistics for Lewis Hamilton and Max Verstappen (career wins, poles, podiums, titles).
Motorsport Stats, Hamilton and Verstappen F1 statistics summaries.
Reuters and other statistical round ups on recent seasons, including dominance of the RB19 and comparisons to previous eras.
Written December 1st, 2025 by Shane Canekeratne