F1 Saudi Arabian Grand Prix betting preview: Max Verstappen’s odds put him in rarefied air
The start of this Formula One season offered few surprises and few differences from the end of the 2023 season. Will the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix prove to have more variety, or will it be another Max Verstappen show? The odds have the Red Bull driver as a massive favorite, as will likely be the case for every race until something different happens.
Verstappen won pole position and cruised to an easy victory at the season-opening Bahrain Grand Prix. Before qualifying started in Saudi Arabia, the Dutch driver was -450 (2-to-9) to win and -110 (10-to-11) to take pole again. Verstappen took pole by a solid margin on Friday, further cementing his status as favorite for the race.
With things looking so similar to last season, Verstappen is favored to win the championship with frankly absurd odds. Not absurd in that they are wrong (who honestly doesn’t think Verstappen will win his fourth straight championship right now?), but absurd in how much of a sure thing another Verstappen title appears to be. He is -800 (1-to-8) to win the drivers’ championship, which projects him to be a nearly 89 percent favorite. You could be reading this thinking, “Well, yeah,” but it’s worth noting that we’re only one race into the season, and it’s already basically viewed as a formality that Verstappen will win.
There aren’t many other championships across sports that see odds like this at the beginning of a season. Verstappen was -600 before the season started, and the opening race victory removed a lot of remaining doubt. No teams showed up to Bahrain with much faster cars than anticipated.
It’s hard to find comparisons to Verstappen’s dominant championship odds at this point in the season. For starters, F1 doesn’t have a playoff format like many American sports, which means Verstappen isn’t subjected to a random bad race that could prove costly. There is, of course, less variability over the course of a long season. So you won’t see -800 champion odds ever in the NFL, for example. Even an utterly dominant team like UConn women’s basketball at the peak of that dynasty was subject to a single-elimination tournament to win a championship, so those odds would be out of reach. The same goes for Rafael Nadal’s incredible run of winning nine French Opens in 10 years. Those are things that most people were sure would happen, but anything can happen in one game or match.
The closest cross-sport comparison is Bayern Munich or Juventus in their respective domestic leagues. Bayern has won 11 straight Bundesliga titles, and Juventus won nine straight Serie A titles from 2012-2020. It’s a closer comparison to F1 because those titles are decided over a 34- or 38-match season. Bayern was -500 at the start of last season and was mostly in that range at the start of the last few seasons. That’s still not quite up to Verstappen’s -600, and the odds weren’t moving to -800 after one match week, but that gets us in the vicinity. There simply aren’t many things in sports you can bank on as much as a Max Verstappen championship and, to an even stronger extent, a Red Bull championship (which is currently -900).
To bring it back to F1, the recent dominant years for Mercedes would have seen similar certainty on the constructor side, but Lewis Hamilton saw more competition from his teammates, even losing the 2016 title to teammate Nico Rosberg in 2016. Sergio Pérez isn’t close to Verstappen often enough to make it seem like a real title fight. Sebastian Vettel won four straight titles with Red Bull from 2010-2013, but he won the 2010 title by four points and the 2012 title by three points. Verstappen’s 10 straight wins last season surpassed Vettel’s nine straight wins in 2013, but those nine wins came at the end of the season. Vettel only won the opening race once during his title streak.
Perhaps some of Michael Schumacher’s run of five straight championships with Ferrari from 2000-2004 would have been close to Verstappen in sportsbooks. Schumacher won 12 of the first 13 races in 2004 after having won the previous four titles. He would have been an overwhelming championship favorite very quickly.
The point is, Verstappen’s lopsided odds are nearly unprecedented across major sports. His dominance on the track has translated to the odds in a way few teams and athletes have seen.
