History of Max Verstappen: A world champion, abandoned at the rest stop

History of Max Verstappen
A world champion, abandoned at the rest stop

Lewis Hamilton is dethroned, and for the first time a Dutchman is world champion in Formula 1. Max Verstappen sits down in the season finale in Abu Dhabi, thus allowing his father Jos to work out his plan. Which, however, did not always involve overly caring treatment.

Unlike Michael Schumacher, Max Verstappen didn’t get his kart competitors’ worn-out tires out of the garbage can, nor did he have to sleep in a mini-apartment on a pull-out sofa like Lewis Hamilton – but the youth of the new Formula 1 world champion was by no means a piece of cake . His father Jos, a 107-time Grand Prix participant and Schumacher team-mate at Benetton, recognized his son’s enormous talent early on. And “Jos the Boss” cut the jewel with great rigor.

Young Max’s week was divided into two parts. School from Monday to Friday lunchtime, then we went by bus across Europe to kart races. “We didn’t go out on the track to go behind. I always wanted to win, win, win. That’s what I asked him to do,” recalls Verstappen senior. Once he was so angry with his son that he left him at a motorway service station. “I wanted to let him feel that it is not good if he continues like this,” explained Verstappen. He was not a bad father, however: “I knew that my wife was driving behind me and taking him with her.”

The story of Jos Verstappen also includes the sentencing to five years imprisonment on probation after he and his father Frans inflicted a fractured skull in a 1998 kart race. In 2008, the former Formula 1 driver was convicted of violating a ban on approaching his ex-wife, Max’s mother, and acquitted of domestic violence. These episodes have only indirectly to do with Max Verstappen, they are all allowed to Glorification of “tough love”, of strict love, but also not lacking.

Without a doubt, Max Verstappen is a driver who grows under pressure and never gives in. As a teenager, he drove his competitors into the ground in the youth series. He was just 17 years old and didn’t even have a driver’s license, when Red Bull made him the youngest Formula 1 driver in history in 2015 with the Toro Rosso junior team. The intrepid Dutchman quickly attracted attention, Verstappen broke almost all age records in the premier class. In May 2016, in a first race for Red Bull at the age of 18 and 228 days, he became the youngest Formula 1 race winner to date.

Quite a few believe that Verstappen would also have become the youngest world champion if Red Bull had given him a title-worthy car earlier – or if he had succumbed to Mercedes’ advances. As it is, the 24-year-old has to leave the merits in this ranking to Sebastian Vettel, who only had 23 years and 134 days under his belt when he won his first title in 2010.

“Crashstappen” is history

It won’t matter to Verstappen. The Dutchman’s self-confidence, who can count King Willem-Alexander among his countless fans, is at least as great as his talent. “Ten dominant years for me” he said in an interview in 2017, “the rest is not that important.”

Verstappen has won around every seventh of his 141 races to date, the unflattering nickname “Crashstappen” has been dropped. With the maturity of seven Formula 1 years, Verstappen is still rock-hard, in the grueling generation duel with the seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton he often went to the limit or a bit beyond, but you hardly ever see him turning or taking off. Verstappen still has a few golden years ahead of them, even if in George Russell, Lando Norris or Charles Leclerc other highly talented drivers in his age group have an increased interest in preventing this.

Max Emilian Verstappen, born on September 30, 1997 into a racing family, lives for his sport. Little is learned from his private life, except that the Brazilian world champion daughter Kelly Piquet is currently the woman at his side. In his adopted home Monaco, Verstappen works passionately on his fitness. He can’t last long without a steering wheel: He discovered sim racing for himself even before the mandatory Corona break at the beginning of 2020.

Many small building blocks create an overall picture at Verstappen. Father Jos says, not without pride, that he laid the foundation stone: “Max shouldn’t overtake on the straights with the slipstream, but in the corner, where it’s more difficult. He’s still benefiting from that today.”

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