IN NUMBERS: Can Verstappen win the title based on current form?

With five rounds remaining in the 2025 season, the battle for the Drivers’ Championship has been rapidly heating up.

Much focus has surrounded the increased threat posed by Max Verstappen, with the Dutchman’s recent strong run of form seeing him close the gap to leader Oscar Piastri down to just 40 points, while Piastri’s McLaren team mate Lando Norris is only 14 points adrift in second.

Four-time World Champion Verstappen admitted after his latest win in Austin that “the chance is there” for him to claim a fifth consecutive title, adding: “We just need to try to deliver these weekends to the end of the year, so yeah, we’ll at least try whatever we can.”

But would another streak of similar results for Verstappen until the end of the season – as well as a repeat in recent form for Piastri and Norris – be enough to secure him the title? And what does Piastri need to do to defend his lead and seal a maiden championship?

Well, we’ve been delving into the data to find out…

Who wins the title if Verstappen is 1st and Piastri 2nd for the rest of the season?

Verstappen has triumphed in three of the last four Grands Prix, a pattern that he will be hoping to extend into the final five rounds of the campaign. Looking at his chances based on past success, the Dutchman has form at each of the upcoming tracks, having scored five wins in Mexico City, three in Sao Paulo, one in Las Vegas, two in Qatar and four in Abu Dhabi.

That makes for a total of 15 victories across these tracks. Throw in a win at the 2023 Sao Paulo Sprint and the statistics make for even more impressive reading – and perhaps ominous for his rivals.

Let’s say that Verstappen takes to the top step at every remaining race – along with the two remaining Sprints – but that championship leader Piastri finishes each event in second, with Norris in third. In this scenario, Piastri would clinch the title on a total of 450 points – by a margin of just three points from Verstappen, while Norris would have a deficit of 31 points.

In terms of his own record at the next five circuits, Piastri’s only two Sprint victories were achieved in Qatar, while his best finish in Mexico has been a P8.

As for Norris, the Briton took victory in last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix, plus the Sao Paulo Sprint in 2024. His own best result at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez was a second place, also achieved last season.

Who wins the title based on each driver’s points scored since the summer break?

Given that the championship fight arguably took its greatest turn after F1 returned from its summer break in August – with the five rounds since seeing Verstappen embark on his promising run – we also looked at the data based on each of the title protagonists' average scores across these races.

Across these five weekends in Zandvoort, Monza, Baku, Singapore and Austin, Piastri took victory in the Dutch Grand Prix before claiming P2 at the Italian race one week later. He has since finished off the podium at each of the three events since, giving him an average score of 12.4 since the summer break.

Norris’ average result from these five rounds, meanwhile, comes in at 11.4, while Verstappen’s ranks at 23.8. As such, the data shows that if each driver continued to score that figure (rounded to the nearest whole number) at each of the upcoming weekends, Verstappen would have 426 points by the end of the campaign, meaning that he would be crowned World Champion by 20 points from Piastri, with Norris 39 points adrift of the top spot in third.

From the last five rounds on the calendar, Verstappen’s average finish is 3.3, while Norris’ is 5.9 and Piastri’s stands at 7.6.

Needless to say, the McLaren duo will be keen to turn this around as soon as possible – and it will be fascinating to see how the results really play out…