Max Verstappen “won’t really care” about 2025 F1 season despite another standout pole

Max Verstappen shrugged off the significance of his 2025 F1 campaign, saying he “won’t really care” about the season when he’s older, despite claiming another standout pole in Azerbaijan.

Verstappen capitalised on difficult conditions to take his first career pole position in Baku.

Remarkably, it’s one of the few tracks Verstappen hasn’t taken pole at.

This is mainly due to Charles Leclerc’s remarkable record in Azerbaijan over the years, taking four consecutive pole positions.

Like for a lot of this season, Red Bull found performance overnight between practice and qualifying.

With the McLarens and Ferraris making mistakes, Verstappen produced a world champion-level performance to beat Williams’ Carlos Sainz to pole position.

While Verstappen continues to perform at an incredible level, the lack of a title at the end of the season means it won’t be a memorable one for him when he retires.

“I think when I’m older, I won’t really care,” Verstappen said. “I’ll just think about other stuff, enjoy with my friends, family, and then maybe get some highlights — like, “well, yeah, that was good.” But it’s been a good year for sure.

“I’m happy with my performances. It seems like now we understand the car a bit better, which I think is the most important out of it.

“And then when I feel a bit happier in the car, you can extract naturally a bit more out of it. And that’s what we’re doing right now. So hopefully we can just keep that going.”

Can Verstappen make it back-to-back wins?

Verstappen dominated the last race at Monza from pole position, winning by 19 seconds.

Verstappen was pleased with the progress Red Bull have made since FP1, despite a chaotic qualifying.

“Long qualifying, to be honest, with so many red flags,” Verstappen added.

“So it was very difficult to basically get your lap together, because most of the time your tyres are not really ready or again, a red flag happens. So especially Q3, with also a bit of rain around, it was a very difficult session. And then in the final lap, you just have to send it.

“I wasn’t even on the best tyres that I wanted, but because of all the red flags, you basically run out of tyres. And yeah, I’m very happy with how the weekend went so far. Because I think, you know, from FP1, we were not too bad, and we just kept on improving a tiny amount. And then we were there in qualifying, and that’s, of course, where it matters.”

Verstappen should have a clear run at the victory early on.

The two McLarens are set to start from seventh and ninth respectively.

Leclerc is the lead Ferrari in 10th, while Lewis Hamilton qualified 12th. 

Looking ahead to the race, Verstappen said: “Yeah. Still, again, long race. Of course, you want to have a good start.

“But even then, we just need to do our own race, look after our tyres, because it’s still quite tough on the tyres around here because of the softer compounds. And then, we’ll see what happens.”