Current Max Verstappen

2015 sees the arrival of the youngest driver ever to sit in an F1 car. Max Verstappen was born on 30th September 1997 and, assuming he makes the grid in Australia, will only be 17 years and 167 days, beating Jaime Alguersuaris' record by 1 year and 323 days (assuming my maths is correct).

How can such a young man be ready for F1? As the son of former F1 driver Jos Verstappen Max started racing karts at 4½ years old. In 2006 he won the Belgian Minimax Championship in the KF5 category and in 2007 he won both the Dutch and Belgian titles as well as the Belgian Cadet Championship.

In 2009 he won the KF5 Flemish Championship and moved up to International Karting. In 2010 Max finished 2nd in the KF3 World Cup, won the Euro Series and the WSK World Series. In 2011 he again won the WSK World Series and moved up the KF2 class winning the WSK Master Series and the South Garda Winter Cup in 2012. In 2013, at 15 years of age, Verstappen won the World KZ Championship, which is highest level of karting.

For 2014 Max moved up to European Formula 3. He finished 3rd in the Championship winning 10 of the 33 races, more than those who finished above him in the title race. Max was recruited into the Red Bull Young Driver Programme in August 2014 and only 6 days later was announced as one of the drivers for Toro Rosso in F1 for 2015. Apparently he was also being courted by Mercedes for their young driver programme so you have to wonder how much the pull of an F1 seat at Toro Rosso drove the decision to go with Red Bull.

Having already taken part in 3 Friday sessions as a test driver Max Verstappen is the youngest person ever to take part in a Grand Prix weekend. If he acquits himself well during 2015 many will say it is an inspired decision. If he turns into a mobile chicane or treats F1 like a destruction derby I'm sure many questions will be asked as to why someone not even old enough to qualify for a driving licence in his home country is allowed to get behind the wheel of a car at the pinnacle of motorsport.

Future Champion? One season (or even one race) wonder? 2015 will be very interesting for Max Verstappen.
 
Cheaters gonna cheat.

But Max Verstappen using 20% more throttle at the apex exit does so with the intention of pushing off Norris who has to lift his throttle pedal to avoid contact with the Red Bull driver and finally has no choice but to miss the next corner. In short, the Red Bull driver forces him to exceed the track limits.

 
I think it's fair to say that there are very few super successful sports people who don't have some sociopathic tendencies. This is certainly true of many F1 world Champions. Schumacher and Senna's behaviour are analogous with Verstappen. Sometimes you don't need to be overtly Machiavellian, David Coulthard didn't have the killer instinct so Mika Hakkinen quietly destroyed him whilst driving the best car on the grid. Prost used to get the best out the team by undermining his team mates behind the scenes, look at how he destroyed Nigel Mansell, who was a pretty tough character.

Fernando Alonso is another who uses his position in the team to destroy his team mates, and the incident in Singapore showed that his behaviour was facilitated by the team management. Nelson Piquet was very much the "No. 1", and when Williams didn't show him the respect he thought he deserved he buggered off to Lotus and took the Honda engine with him.

The one exception to this, of the multiple world champions, appears to be Lewis Hamilton. I'm pretty sure Lewis has some distributing and unpleasant character traits (witness him backing Nico Rosberg up at Abu Dhabi in 2016), but he seems to dominate the team simply by being much better than his team mate. The fact that Rosberg retired immediately after winning the title showed how hard he had to work to get close to Lewis, and to keep that up for another season was too much.

The point I'm making is that Max is very far from being unique in the way he behaves, and if Lando wants to be able to challenge him he could do a lot worse that sitting down with Nico Rosberg to find out how he did what he did. Currently, Lando is bit more Coulthard than Schumacher, and he ain't a Prost. He has to find a way to dominate his team, and form there build to dominate the race track.

Comments in interviews like this need to stop as Max has beaten hi before he even gets on the track - Mexico Grand Prix 2024: Lando Norris "not quite at the level" of Max Verstappen in race-craft.
 
I think it's fair to say that there are very few super successful sports people who don't have some sociopathic tendencies. This is certainly true of many F1 world Champions. Schumacher and Senna's behaviour are analogous with Verstappen. Sometimes you don't need to be overtly Machiavellian, David Coulthard didn't have the killer instinct so Mika Hakkinen quietly destroyed him whilst driving the best car on the grid. Prost used to get the best out the team by undermining his team mates behind the scenes, look at how he destroyed Nigel Mansell, who was a pretty tough character.

Fernando Alonso is another who uses his position in the team to destroy his team mates, and the incident in Singapore showed that his behaviour was facilitated by the team management. Nelson Piquet was very much the "No. 1", and when Williams didn't show him the respect he thought he deserved he buggered off to Lotus and took the Honda engine with him.

The one exception to this, of the multiple world champions, appears to be Lewis Hamilton. I'm pretty sure Lewis has some distributing and unpleasant character traits (witness him backing Nico Rosberg up at Abu Dhabi in 2016), but he seems to dominate the team simply by being much better than his team mate. The fact that Rosberg retired immediately after winning the title showed how hard he had to work to get close to Lewis, and to keep that up for another season was too much.

The point I'm making is that Max is very far from being unique in the way he behaves, and if Lando wants to be able to challenge him he could do a lot worse that sitting down with Nico Rosberg to find out how he did what he did. Currently, Lando is bit more Coulthard than Schumacher, and he ain't a Prost. He has to find a way to dominate his team, and form there build to dominate the race track.

Comments in interviews like this need to stop as Max has beaten hi before he even gets on the track - Mexico Grand Prix 2024: Lando Norris "not quite at the level" of Max Verstappen in race-craft.
Totally agree Lando needs to speak to Prost and stop giving Verstappen an inch and act like his best mate
 
Horner has come out now, to say, essentially that his view is that, whoever is on the inside should control the corner:

As far as I can see, this basically would mean that no-one could ever overtake on the outside, because all a defending driver would need to do is to stick the car to the inside, and run the overtaking car off the road...
nice to see he finally doesn't blame hamilton for silverstone 2021
 
Horner has come out now, to say, essentially that his view is that, whoever is on the inside should control the corner:

As far as I can see, this basically would mean that no-one could ever overtake on the outside, because all a defending driver would need to do is to stick the car to the inside, and run the overtaking car off the road...
Which is what Verstappen does anyway
 
What is clear now, if it wasn't already before, is that without a massively superior car, Verstappen is just not a very good driver and has to resort to dirty tactics to hold off other cars.
I've just spent the whole day telling some Dutch fan on Facebook that Verstappen doesn't hold a stick to Senna, Mansell or Villeneuve in terms of real racers in the 80s. His best response to defend Verstappen will be missed when he leaves F1and started saying Brits are softies when other drivers beat them and the whole country got Verstappen penalised crying about Austin. It was hilarious because the responses got longer and longer from him.
 
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