It took all but a few minutes after the checkered flag flew in Abu Dhabi for the Formula 1 world championship odds to be released for the 2026 season. Unsurprisingly, new world champion Lando Norris was listed on top, though to the surprise of some, he was tied with George Russell.
Behind the McLaren driver and the Mercedes driver in third was Red Bull's Max Verstappen, who entered the 2025 season having won four titles in a row and finished just two points behind Norris after trailing him by 70 earlier in the year.
He ultimately went from 104 points out of the lead to just two, as he flipped a 104-point deficit to McLaren's Oscar Piastri into an 11-point advantage over the course of the 24-race season's final nine Grand Prix weekends.
All things considered, it was somewhat of a surprise to see Verstappen listed third. Though he didn't win the world championship in 2025, he was still the consensus best driver for doing what he did in a car that finished a distant third in the constructor championship.
He led Formula 1 in victories for the fifth year in a row, thanks to his three-race win streak over the course of the season-ending tripleheader, and he wrapped up the season with 10 consecutive podium finishes, six more than his longest streak from a championship-winning 2024 campaign.
Now here we are, three days into the offseason, and Verstappen is indeed now the betting favorite to win a fifth world championship in 2026.
Max Verstappen is the new 2026 F1 world championship favorite
FanDuel Sportsbook lists the 71-time Grand Prix winner at +210, ahead of Norris at +300 and Russell at +350. Piastri is listed at +490; nobody else has odds shorter than +1400.
Given past preseason Formula 1 world championship odds, the fact that Verstappen is given less than a 1-in-3 chance to win the title, despite being the outright favorite, goes to show how little anybody truly knows about what the pecking order might look like amid the new regulations set to go into effect in 2026. Though he's the outright favorite, there is no prohibitive favorite.
Red Bull nailed it in 2022, and Verstappen went on to win a total of 34 races in 2022 and 2023, more than any other driver had ever managed to win in any three-year span, much less a two-year span, in Formula 1 history. But there are no guarantees for 2026, especially amid the Milton Keynes-based team's switch from Honda to Ford.
What we do know, however, is that the 28-year-old Dutchman holds the record for the most wins (37) in seasons his team did not win the constructor championship, and that two of his four world championships (would have been three of five had he won in 2025) were won after he did not enter the year as the outright betting favorite to win.
In 2024, he became the first world champion for a team not inside the top two in the constructor standings since Nelson Piquet won it in 1983.
Based on the points per race scored only by the second Red Bull car in 2025, the team would have finished ninth of 10 in the constructor standings.
Full 2026 Formula 1 world championship odds can be found here and are always subject to change.
The 2026 Formula 1 season is scheduled to get underway on Sunday, March 8 with the Australian Grand Prix at Albert Park Circuit.