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Formula 1 MONZA, Italy — “Du, du, du, du, Max Verstappen! ” The catchy festival-style chant, familiar to Formula One fans since it first went viral in 2022, rivaled Red Bull’s Austrian national anthem as Max Verstappen stepped onto the top step of the podium at Monza on Sunday. He waved to the crowd, filled mainly with Ferrari red, as the fans cheered on the 2025 Italian Grand Prix winner. Advertisement After going win-less since the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix in May, only appearing on the podium two other times in that eight-race stretch, Verstappen was back — and relaxed as ever. It wasn’t just that the Dutchman won his third grand prix of the season. He set the tone on Saturday, when he recorded the fastest lap in F1 history en route to his first pole position since July’s British Grand Prix. He proceeded to conquer the Temple of Speed as he won the shortest race in the sport’s history, a record one hour, 13 minutes and 23 seconds. And he did so with a 19. 207-second gap over Mc Laren’s Lando Norris, who finished second after Oscar Piastri was ordered to swap places with the Briton following a slow pit stop by the team. The F1 paddock wants to know how Verstappen and Red Bull did it, and if they can do so again across the season run-in. “We’ll try for sure, ” Verstappen said. “We’ll go step by step, race by race, but for us this was an unbelievable weekend. ” Simply iconic ? #F1 || #Italian GP ? ? pic. twitter. com/AILRr Ijqhs — Oracle Red Bull Racing (@redbullracing) September 7, 2025 Red Bull team principal Laurent Mekies had said his squad’s data suggested Mc Laren would have “a bigger advantage” in the race than qualifying showed. But that turned out not to be the case. The race started with a scrap between Verstappen and Norris – one that led to Red Bull telling Verstappen to return the lead to the Mc Laren driver after he’d gone off track and cut Turn 2. While Verstappen did do this at the start of Lap 2 of 53, he kept with the papaya-colored car. He then retook the lead at the start of Lap 4, as he went around the outside at Turn 1, while Norris locked up on the inside. The big question was whether the Red Bull could then hold onto the lead, given that Mc Laren has had the superior tire wear in so many races this season. Advertisement “You don’t know, ” Verstappen said when asked about his confidence after the pass. “Of course, I was pushing a bit to try and get ahead, and then time will tell, right? ” After a few laps, as the race settled into a rhythm, it became clear that Verstappen had it in the bag, barring anything chaotic. His lead over the Mc Larens behind steadily grew, reaching a maximum of 6. 5 seconds at Lap 25. This had shrunk to just over five seconds when Red Bull swapped Verstappen’s starting medium compound for hard tires — a typical strategy for Monza given the high pit lane time loss here. But Norris then stayed out quite a bit longer than expected on the mediums, as Mc Laren opted to gamble in case there was a late safety car period. Verstappen had a brief scare when Ollie Bearman and Carlos Sainz tangled, risking the Mc Larens jumping ahead as he was closing the gap that widened during his hard tire stint. But the Williams and Haas drivers got back on track with no issues. The race had been akin to a leisurely Sunday drive for the Dutchman, given his early hard work to build a gap to the Mc Laren duo. He only lost the lead again when he pitted, and he retook it when Piastri and Norris finally changed tire compounds. His radio messages and post-race demeanor reflected his relaxed mood, as Verstappen cracked jokes around “no risk, full push” and laughed with race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase regarding the late Mc Laren team orders saga. When Lambiase informed him of Mc Laren’s driver swap, Verstappen laughed and asked, “Just because he (Norris) had a slow stop? ” Lambiase drily replied, “It’s not our business …” The win was unexpected, given Mc Laren’s dominance this season. Red Bull has struggled with its car, specifically with balance issues affecting driver handling through slower corners, and it’s a far cry from how it once was back in 2023, when Verstappen and Red Bull took a historic run of victories. Verstappen went as far as to say post-race, “It was nice, for once. ” What jumped out to Verstappen about his car’s performance this weekend when speaking post-race in the FIA news conference was that its balance finally felt better, and “the tires behaved a little bit more normal. ” He said he’d felt that earlier this season, he was at times “a passenger in the car” due to the balance issues. Advertisement “It just seems like this weekend has been another step forward, just the behavior of the car, ” Verstappen said. “It also showed in the race. ” The change came from Red Bull adopting a slightly different setup philosophy during the Monza weekend. F1 is a sport that runs and thrives on data. Race simulations are constantly run, accounting for a slew of different factors, even if some scenarios are unlikely. But part of the sport relies on the human aspect — what does the gut say, and what is the driver feeling? It’s a balancing act of which is weighed more, and how to merge them. This weekend, Red Bull relied a bit more on driver feedback and less on its simulator. “Up until now, we’ve had a lot of races where we were just shooting left and right a little bit with the setup of the car, ” Verstappen said. “Quite extreme changes, which showed that we were not in control. We were not fully understanding what to do. ” That doesn’t mean that Red Bull didn’t also rely on its data. Teams often bring track-specific components, such as rear wings, to low-downforce tracks like Monza, and Mekies said post-race that Red Bull had heavily reviewed the 2024 Italian GP, where its old car performed poorly, and brought solutions for this year. That helped make the 2025 car much better, and Mekies praised Verstappen for a “perfect weekend. ” Did Red Bull finally solve its car issues? Mekies cautioned that much of the progress was “probably Monza-specific, ” with Baku serving as the real test of whether the improvements transfer to other tracks. Since the team used a Monza-specific wing this weekend and tends to be closer to Mc Laren on high-speed circuits, the improvement didn’t happen overnight. Mekies estimates that it took about a year for the team to develop the sculpted rear wing concept, which they first used at the 2024 race here. Red Bull also introduced a new floor on Verstappen’s car – the aerodynamic part that is so important to make cars fast in the current ground-effect design era. Advertisement But suggestions were also made during the weekend that Verstappen and Red Bull were debating which direction to go with the car and were opposed at times. This was something Mekies confirmed. Mekies said Red Bull experimented with different setups in practice on Saturday, with Verstappen pushing the team to “keep it on the ground” and find alternative solutions for balance. “The guys have been doing an amazing job in managing that, ” Mekies said. The Red Bull camp has reasons for cautious optimism. As cliché as it is, time will tell, and it’ll come down to whether the team has fully identified what was previously limiting its car. Verstappen reckons, right now, it’s “still a bit track dependent, ” given Monza’s low downforce nature. “It always seems like our car is a little bit more competitive when it’s low- to medium-downforce. So it’s not like suddenly now we are back, ” Verstappen continued. “It’s not like we can fight every single weekend. But the positive is that we seem to understand a little bit more what we need to do with the car to be more competitive. “So I hope that that carries on into the coming rounds as well, and some tracks will be a bit better than others. ” (Top photo: Clive Rose/Getty Images) Spot the pattern. Connect the terms Find the hidden link between sports terms Play today's puzzle Madeline Coleman is a Staff Writer for The Athletic covering Formula One. Prior to joining The Athletic, she served as a writer and editor on Sports Illustrated’s breaking and trending news team. She is a graduate of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill and received her master’s degree from the University of Florida. Follow Madeline on Twitter @mwc13_3