2017: Mechanical issues and crashes lead to growing frustration
Season: 20 races, 2 wins, 0 poles, 1 fastest laps, 4 podiums
Drivers championship: 6th place, 168 points
Verstappen expected to make further rapid progress in 2017, but instead it proved to be a patchy season with seven retirements over the course of the first 14 races - four due to mechanical issues and three due to first-lap collisions in Spain, Austria and Singapore. But when he did finish, he was doing well even as Red Bull's own title-wining form of previous years ebbed away.
A string of top five successes led on to his second F1 race win at the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, one day after his 20th birthday, having pulled off a successful early pass on Lewis Hamilton. He was initially third in the US race only to be demoted after being deemed to have cut the corner passing Räikkönen on the final lap, but he bounced back from that slight at the following race in Mexico to claim a second win of the season with a first-lap pass on Vettel.
Even so, the 2017 season ended with Mercedes and Ferrari once more firmly on top of the constructors championship and Red Bull a distant third, Verstappen still behind his team mate Ricciardo in the drivers standings. It was hard to see a way forward for either the team or for Verstappen personally without shaking things up. The ultimate objective of a world championship seemed as far away as ever.
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