SINGAPORE -- Max Verstappen is back. Sunday's Singapore Grand Prix win made that clear enough.
After 10 months and 15 Formula 1 races without a win this year, he now has two of them in the space of eight days. Fortunately for world-champion-to-be Kimi Antonelli and Mercedes, it's early October and there's just not enough time for the Dutchman to repeat his legendary 2025 fightback.
Antonelli, who will have a slim mathematical chance of winning his maiden world championship at the U.S. Grand Prix on Oct. 25, said what everyone else must was thinking after finishing third on Sunday. Asked by Sky Sports F1 if he was glad Verstappen was so far back in the points table, the Italian laughed.
"Yeah, I know, because it would be very scary," Antonelli replied. "It would be very, very scary."
Scary indeed. Just ask McLaren CEO Zak Brown about that: Verstappen took the fight to his drivers Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri down the stretch last season, leading to one of the best soundbites of F1's recent history.
Verstappen was 104 points back last year -- he's 119 behind Antonelli now, albeit with only six races left. Verstappen and Red Bull's fightback last season had started after the August summer break. In the middle of that resurgent run, Brown likened the four-time world champion to a villain in a horror movie who never dies. At the next news conference, Verstappen joked that people could call him "Chucky."
Even with his considerable talent, Verstappen is too far back to do a compelling "Chucky" impression this time around, although you certainly would not bet against him winning a few more races between here and the end of the year. He could be mathematically out of contention in Austin if he finishes behind Antonelli, for one thing, although we could still a remarkable end to his season if he keeps this run of form going. With six to go, he's eight points off third-placed Lewis Hamilton and 17 behind the seemingly cursed George Russell in second. He could quite feasibly finish the season as runner-up.
Imagine predicting that in June. It's been quite a turnaround.
That barren run Verstappen started the year with was bleak indeed. He seemed to question everything about his future: he hated (and still hates) the new engines and the new style of driving they demand, while Red Bull started the new regulations on the back foot as it got to grips with its brand-new engine project, built from the ground up.
He finally won the Bahrain Grand Prix in Malaysia last weekend -- the team's first with the Red Bull-built engine -- and followed it up with his first ever win at Singapore's street venue.
While Verstappen will be relived the turnaround has come, he would not be surprised. When he signed his contract extension to stay with Red Bull until at least 2030 in the summer - ending 18 months of speculation that he could leave the team or the sport altogether -- he pointed to his belief in the team.
"I think the last few races have been really positive for us," Verstappen said after the win. "It's just great to see and yeah, we have a lot of motivation in the team to try and deliver even more results. It's a really good group of people. I really enjoy working with them and hopefully we can have a bit more fun 'til the end of the year."
It's symbolic that, since signing that contract, the man as synonymous with Red Bull Racing as anyone else has equaled and then surpassed the 72 wins that Michael Schumacher claimed for Ferrari; Hamilton won 84 for Mercedes, the most by a driver for one team. That record will surely go to Verstappen before his Red Bull contract is out.
Sunday's win was his first at Singapore -- the only circuit, bar the new-for-2026 Madring, he had not won at coming into the season -- which was also surprising for a man of his talent.
Amusingly, he finally did it at Marina Bay without radio, leaving race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase talking on a one-way channel for most of the race. "Maybe he was happy that it was not working," Verstappen joked, referencing the famously terse exchanges he and Lambiase can often have.
But who needs a working radio when you've got Max Verstappen in the car?
A new benchmark
While Red Bull has seemingly made a big jump forward over the past two races, Mercedes' own status in the competitive order has become a little puzzling.
Verstappen's long-time rival Russell looked a little bewildered when he got to the media pen on Sunday evening. You can't blame him, given how things have gone in the two weeks since what felt like a resurgent victory at Baku's Azerbaijan Grand Prix.
Sunday in Singapore must have felt like further salt in an already-festering wound. It had been a long and fruitless drive from the back of the field to 12th -- zero points -- in a race that just about summed up his luckless campaign, when a Virtual Safety Car period stopped just as he turned his silver Mercedes into the pit entry. That likely cost him a place in the top 10.
Russell said the competitive balance of the grid seems to have shifted.
"I think the main thing for us as a team is to try and understand how we're going to find more performance because the performance of Red Bull has been very impressive, the last three weeks on three very different circuits, and you know right now they are the team to beat," he said.
Russell and Antonelli had been tasked with helping Mercedes extract a bit more out of the package this weekend. The team had been puzzled by the upgrade it introduced in Malaysia a week ago, with both drivers suggesting it might have actually been a step backwards from their once-dominant position. The solution for this week was simple: Antonelli kept the troublesome upgrade, while Russell moved to the old spec so the team could measure the two.
The verdict on Sunday was unclear.
"The goal right now is we need to understand how to get more out of this package," Russell said. "You know what, Kimi ran [the new upgrade], the numbers say it's performing as we expect but obviously the lap times haven't been that great so we need to try and understand how to make that work".
Antonelli himself seemed confident Mercedes will be be back at the front once it gets its head around the new package.
Asked about Red Bull's form and whether he thought it was its new upgrade being ahead, or Mercedes not yet getting the most out of its, he said: "I think it's probably mostly us not extracting the maximum out of the new package. Of course, Red Bull has done an incredible step forward. Max has been more comfortable with the car and extracting more out of it. It's a combination of things."
Either way, Mercedes boss Toto Wolff hinted that the team is already expecting to be battling Verstappen and Red Bull for the title next season.
"Really, you need to take your hat off of what Red Bull has done this season, how they have developed the car and how it's all come together as a package," Wolff said on Sunday night. "And then you put Max Verstappen in the car and when he feels that this thing is driving like he wants it to drive, then these are the results. He's been by far the quickest guy today. He's been the quickest guy in Kuala Lumpur.
"Let's see when our upgrade hopefully starts to work and land in a place where we think it should be, whether we can be competitive against him. But one thing is for sure, next year it's a full-on fight between the teams and Red Bull is part of that."
Austin's Circuit of the Americas will present a new challenge altogether. Verstappen, reminding us he is the connoisseur of all things motor racing, is braced for a painful weekend in Texas.
Asked if Red Bull can now challenge everywhere, he was cautious.
"I mean, it's very difficult to say and I don't want to say now that I will be in the fight in Austin," Verstappen said on Sunday at the end of the news conference. "But yeah, the last few weekends have been great. But I just take it race by race and once we are in Austin, then we'll see how it will go there.
"But it's a very different track. From what I saw in [World Endurance Championship], the track is incredibly bumpy. Oh my God, yeah, I'll probably need to order a new spine, I think, after the weekend. Yeah, I'll become like RoboCop. Yeah, crazy. That's a new challenge for everyone, to deal with those bumps."
Chucky, Robocop; bumps or no bumps; it doesn't matter. Whichever role he's playing and wherever he has to play it, Verstappen is back to where he belongs: as the surest of sure things Formula 1 has right now.