Verstappen’s Back-To-Back Wins Challenge The Idea Of A New Mercedes Era: Eyes Already On 2027

This week’s subject of Motorsport.com’s “Who slept best last night” series is Max Verstappen. Columnist Oleg Karpov argues that the Dutchman’s back-to-back wins in Malaysia and Singapore could make us question everything we thought we knew about the season.

Karpov admits the title fight has been fairly dull this year. Kimi Antonelli took the lead early on and has not let anyone near it. In his view, while the chances of Antonelli sealing the title in Austin in two weeks are slim, talk of a comeback from George Russell or anyone else is unrealistic, and settling the title sooner would make the remaining races more enjoyable.

Has a Mercedes era really begun?

At the start of the season, the picture seemed clear: with the rule change, Mercedes had built the best power unit and the best chassis, just as in 2014, and looked set for a long spell of dominance. After 2014, rivals only truly challenged Mercedes in 2021 with Red Bull and Verstappen. Karpov admits that, seeing Mercedes’ advantage until early summer, he too believed a similar era had begun.

But Verstappen’s two wins, he argues, open the door to an alternative theory. Mercedes probably still has the strongest engine, and the W17 is a good car. However, the early-season advantage may simply have been a natural result of last year’s circumstances. Mercedes was not in the 2025 title fight and could focus fully on 2026, while Red Bull and McLaren had to keep fighting each other until the end of last season. Being the works team also helped Mercedes exploit the new power unit better than its customer McLaren. Karpov stresses this is not about hiding anything, but about customer teams needing time to understand the engine. Judging by McLaren’s progress over the summer, that advantage is now almost gone.

Red Bull’s unexpected rise

According to Karpov, Red Bull was thought to have used up its development budget in the first half of the year, but that turned out not to be the case. The Baku upgrade was the strongest sign yet that rivals have not just closed in on Mercedes but caught it. By his count, if only the last five rounds were taken into account, Verstappen would be leading the championship by a healthy margin. That is quite a comeback for a team that started the season almost in the midfield.

Still, Karpov warns against underestimating Mercedes. Seeing the size of its early advantage, the team may have stopped developing the W17 in April and switched focus to its 2027 car, which might explain why the package introduced in Malaysia did not make the car faster. Besides, it is hard to call a team that reaches the podium on its bad weekends “struggling”.

The right call for Verstappen

Karpov believes Verstappen, who started the season in a car he disliked and found painfully slow by his standards, must feel very different now. He considers Verstappen’s decision to stay at Red Bull before the team had fully recovered a very wise one. The fact that the team keeps delivering despite losing so many key people must be reassuring for him.

In Karpov’s view, this year’s title picture will not change, and Verstappen may win a few more races. What should excite him most is 2027. If Red Bull maintains this pace, Verstappen will be in the title fight again. The columnist imagines a classic season if Verstappen and Antonelli can battle in equal machinery. He sees Antonelli as a proven generational talent: focused, extremely fast, consistent and, so far, without a dark side, in some ways an improved version of Verstappen himself. Karpov argues that if Lewis Hamilton also had a competitive car, a season of three great talents fighting for the same title would shift F1’s focus away from power unit debates and back to pure sporting rivalry.