Villeneuve Is Right: Red Bull’s 2025 Car Isn’t ‘Built for Max’ – It’s Built to Win

Let’s be honest: the “Red Bull is built for Max” line has become the lazy take of the modern F1 era. Jacques Villeneuve has just kicked the door in on that myth, and he’s right. The 2025 Red Bull isn’t a comfort blanket custom‑stitched for Max Verstappen – it’s a brutally optimised, team‑first weapon that only he has the nerve and the brain to wield.

Start with the scoreboard. In 2025, Lando Norris snatched the title with 423 points, but Max missed it by just two, on 421, in a season where Red Bull were out‑developed and only third in the constructors’ standings on 451 points behind McLaren’s 833.^[1][3] Inside that wobbling empire, Verstappen still destroyed his team-mate: Crash.net notes he scored 421 points to Yuki Tsunoda’s 33.^[2] If the car really were “built for Max”, it’s doing a terrible job of protecting Red Bull’s bigger prize – the constructors’ title – and an excellent job of exposing the gulf in ability.

Here’s the uncomfortable truth Villeneuve has put into words. This is not about Red Bull indulging Verstappen. It’s about Verstappen operating at the outer edge of what the concept demands while others flinch.

"Everybody's been saying, ‘Oh, but the car is made for Max. Poor, poor second driver.’ Actually, no. Max is working on it, making the car better and better."

— Jacques Villeneuve, speaking on the High Performance podcast, quoted by Crash.net^[2]

Villeneuve doesn’t stop at the headline. He spells out why the narrative is backwards. As he told the same podcast, if you can’t truly diagnose what the car is doing, you fall behind while Verstappen surges.

"If you're incapable of driving it or figuring out what the issue is during the season, you'll end up going slower and slower and slower. Not because you're actually slower, but because Max will go faster and faster... So, obviously, they will work with Max and obviously, the car will become undrivable for you."

— Jacques Villeneuve, High Performance podcast, via Crash.net^[2][5]

That’s not a conspiracy; that’s elite development work. F1Oversteer’s transcript of Villeneuve goes even further: he blasts some drivers as having “no clue” and being “incapable of making cars evolve” compared to Verstappen, who keeps pushing the platform forward even as others get lost chasing symptoms, not causes.^[5] Make no mistake, that’s an indictment of second drivers, not Red Bull’s design philosophy.

And what is that philosophy on the 2025 RB21? It’s a classic cost‑cap, convergence‑era choice: chase pure lap time inside a very tight rule set. The Race’s analysis of the RB21 makes it plain that the new car is an evolution of the RB20 – visually similar but with “every surface… different to last year” and a focus on a wider operating window rather than some radical Verstappen‑only concept.^[6] Raceteq’s technical breakdown backs that up: reshaped beam wing and floor, a more aggressive front wing spec, and suspected changes in radiator placement and weight distribution, all aimed at broadening how and where the car works, not making it more “peaky” for one driver.^[7]

Christian Horner has been completely open about the brief. In 2024 he talked about needing to “expand that operating window” after the RB20 became too track‑ and set‑up sensitive, and by early 2025 he was calling McLaren “the car to beat” and bracing for a nine‑month “development race” under the cost cap.^[4][6] In other words: Red Bull designed RB21 to survive a season‑long arms race against a quicker rival, not to mollycoddle Verstappen’s preferences.

And the supposed beneficiary of this tailored masterpiece? He doesn’t exactly talk like a man in a bespoke driving glove. Earlier this year, when asked if the car was built to him, Verstappen was blunt:

"I just adapt to what I’ve got. It’s not what I like, it’s just what I have."

— Max Verstappen, speaking to Ford Performance, quoted by Crash.net^[2]

Later, reflecting on the rollercoaster RB21 season, he doubled down with ESPN:

"I've hated this car at times, but I've also loved it at times. And I always tried to extract the most from it, even in the difficult weekends that we've had."

— Max Verstappen, speaking after Abu Dhabi, via ESPN^[8]

Those are not the words of a driver whose team bends physics around his comfort zone. That’s the mentality of a driver who accepts the car as a compromise and then drives beyond everyone else’s tolerance limit.

The strongest counter‑argument is obvious and deserves to be treated seriously: if the car isn’t built around Max, why do his team‑mates keep falling off a cliff? Sergio Pérez said repeatedly that Red Bull’s development direction left him behind. Tsunoda looked adrift for most of 2025. Fans aren’t inventing that suffering.

But Villeneuve hits the core of it. Red Bull’s ground‑effect concept demands a stiff, low platform living dangerously close to aero stall. As he explains, the closer you run the car to the ground, the more grip you have – but that stiffness means “the stiff car mechanically slides”, and the art is finding that “perfect zone where you drive the car, where the car becomes an extra part of your body”.^[1][2] Very few can live there. Verstappen can. His team‑mates, so far, cannot.

In my view, calling that “a Max car” is just a coping mechanism. Under a cost cap, with 2026’s all‑new regulations looming, it would be organisational malpractice for Red Bull to sacrifice peak performance so the number two feels more comfortable. Horner and technical director Pierre Waché have been clear: they’ll chase driveability only so far as it doesn’t cost lap time.^[3][6] That’s what a serious team does.

So yes, Red Bull’s 2025 machine is hard to drive. Yes, it flatters Verstappen and exposes everyone else. But that’s not evidence of bias; it’s the consequence of a team building the sharpest tool it can, then trusting the driver who can actually use it.

Here’s my prediction: if Red Bull nail their 2025 development race and close the gap to McLaren without dulling the RB21’s edge, the “built for Max” chorus will look exactly like what it is – a story fans tell themselves to avoid admitting that one driver is simply operating on a different level. The myth won’t die on its own. It’s time we stop repeating it.