When Max Verstappen raced at the Belgian Grand Prix last season, he was cruising to a third straight Formula One world championship.
One year later, the Dutch driver heads into the same race on Sunday with what's looking like a fight on his hands .
The Red Bull ace still holds a relatively comfortable 76-point lead - with 265 points to 189 for Lando Norris. But Norris' McLaren has erased the speed gap with Verstappen this summer while Mercedes and Ferrari remain real threats for individual victories.
In 2023, Verstappen finished first at the Circuit de Spa-Francorchamps to claim an eighth straight victory and enter the mid-season break with a 125-point lead over teammate Sergio Perez. Verstappen would go on to make it an F1 record 10 wins in a row as Red Bull dominated the season. Ferrari's Carlos Sainz was the only non-Red Bull driver to top the podium.
And Verstappen appeared to be off to another title march this year after winning four of the first five races. But since then he has just three wins in the last eight grand prix and has now gone three consecutive races without a victory for the first time since 2021.
