Max Verstappen says he’s savouring the chance to compete for the world championship for the first time in his career because he can’t be sure it will happen again.
The Red Bull driver holds a 19-point lead over Lewis Hamilton going into this weekend’s race at Interlagos.He made his F1 debut with Toro Rosso in 2015 and won his first race for Red Bull after being promoted to the team the following year. But although he’s won races every season since then he hasn’t had a car which was capable of winning regularly enough to mount a bid for the championship until now.
Having a more competitive car is “the best there is,” said Verstappen. “Otherwise, it’s pretty depressing, if you know that you can’t win.”
“Of course you know when you get to Formula 1, you have to accept it,” he explained. “This is how Formula 1 is. Normally there’s only one or two teams that that can fight for a championship.
“But you hope that one day you get into a car where you can win, right? And as soon as you get into that car, it is very enjoyable.
“You’re happy, because how many times will you have this opportunity? You don’t know, maybe from next year onwards, you never get that opportunity again. So I’m just really enjoying the moment.”
Verstappen’s win in the last race at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez ensured no one else can claim more race victories than him this year. However he will take no consolation from being the season’s most prolific winner if he doesn’t win the championship.
“The only winner is the one who finishes on top,” he said. “It doesn’t matter how many races you win.
“So far I have had a great season. I’ve had a lot of wins, nice pole positions and exactly whatever happens at the end, it’s not going to change my life, I’ve said it many times. I’m just enjoying what I’m doing.
“Of course, I try to win the championship and we are looking good. But I also said a lot of things can happen.”
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David (@djarvis)
12th November 2021, 12:42
I’ve been quietly impressed with how Max is seemingly dealing with the pressure of being in his first title fight this season
Robbie (@robbie)
12th November 2021, 14:34
At the start of the season when it was confirmed how competitive RBR was likely to be this season, Max was asked about the pressure of fighting for the Championship, to which he said if anything he felt less pressure because he would finally have the car to sustain a fight, to answer with wins. I get the impression Max is primarily just grateful to have the car this season, and for him that relieves a lot of pressure.
Dex
12th November 2021, 13:14
That’s a sad fact. First you need to win a complete lottery and be in the right car, then the rest few % is up to you. That’s why I never appreciate F1 champions as much as most other top athletes, even though no sport offers absolutely fair chances. I appreciate things differently when it comes to F1, I care less for numbers and official accolades and titles and form opinions of my own, which are still extremely subjective since I know only what I see as a viewer. To be honest I enjoy those battles to escape the bottom of the championship (a la Minardi, Sauber, now Williams, Manor, Arrows and such teams) more. When some Minardi scores points (if ever), even by some random event (how else), I find it more exciting than seeing someone reach the top. Perhaps not this year, since things really got boring with one dominant team.
N
12th November 2021, 13:18
“That’s why I never appreciate F1 champions as much as most other top athletes”
But then people like Usain Bolt won the greatest lottery, the genetic lottery. He was built to run fast, others will never catch him no matter how much effort they put in.
Sihrtogg (@sihrtogg)
12th November 2021, 13:48
This is why I appreciate sports like snooker. Practice is rewarded more than anything else.
DaveW (@dmw)
12th November 2021, 15:06
I’m pretty sure that’s not true. As in any sport, the top contenders train assiduously, but the best players tend to rise to the top and stay there.
I also enjoyed watching Arrows, Mindardi, Prost, etc. scrap for the lower positions. But lately it seems that the lower rungs are not plucky garagistes but bland corporate operations (except Haas, who is bringing back 1992 every race). Then again we don’t see cars expiring in a shower of molten intake valves and totally hapless pay drivers trundling along 2 seconds off their teammates.
Keith Campbell (@keithedin)
12th November 2021, 13:55
It’s not a ‘complete lottery’ to be put in the right car. There’s a reason the likes of Hamilton and Verstappen end up in the most competitive teams, whereas other drivers spend their entire careers in the midfield or lower, or eventually lose their spot in F1 altogether. The top drivers all made themselves stand out in one way or another, either prior to F1 or in their early years when they didn’t have winning cars under them.
rodewulf (@rodewulf)
12th November 2021, 14:08
@keithedin
Of course there is. Top teams are generally interested in top drivers. Problem is when there are two or even only one team with a throughout title challenging machinery. Fewer teams competing in the sharp end means less opportunities for other drivers than those already in dominant teams. We’ve seen this even about Verstappen in comparision to Hamilton’s first half of his career: Verstappen’s first real shot at a WDC is coming relatively very late.
pSynrg (@psynrg)
12th November 2021, 14:49
Dex, you essentially prefer to support ‘the underdog’, as it’s known. There’s nothing wrong with that.
Try not let it blind your judgment of excellence and what it takes, to be at the top; not forgetting the journey to get there. Sometimes the underdog manages to break through to the very top. It’s rare and it’s special. It’s exactly what the Hamilton’s with Lewis at the wheel have achieved.
Max comes from a different approach. A family of racers who happen to have produced a natural born talent in Max. Easily squandered without the right guidance, but they seem to have got it just right. I think Max’s sense and appreciation of himself is what allows him to battle at the very top level of this sport, without so much as breaking a sweat. He’s a phenomenal driver.
We get to see these two make the difference and battle it out race by race. We may see a new World Champion crowned, always a brilliant moment in the sport. We may see the unprecedented achievement of 8 titles, another brilliant moment in the sport.
What’s not to like? It’s a win win for us all ( except of course, for the runner up! :) )
KaIIe (@kaiie)
12th November 2021, 15:04
Verstappen does have a point: you’re more likely to win a single championship than multiple ones. Even Jim Clark has “just” two. It could be that Verstappen goes on to dominate the sport for the next decade, or he could be the “next Alonso”, and in 2035 we’ll be remembering his only title from this year.
Then again, many drivers have matured and driven even better after their first championship success: think of Keke Rosberg in 1983, or Schumacher in 1995. If Max does a similar leap in performance (and RBR nail the new rules), next year will be a challenge for all the rest.
Cynic (@callmeacynic)
12th November 2021, 15:17
I think this more than anything else has been the difference between him and Hamilton this year.
Max wants and needs this title far more than Hamilton does, and I think it has showed in their performances. He deserves to be ahead at this point, and barring a big turnaround in fortunes it looks like he’s going to be this year’s champion.
It’ll be interesting to see what this does to Hamilton as the last time he lost a championship it seemed to light a fire within him and he went on to reach new heights. I think he and the team have been below their own high standards this season so as a steadfast Mercedes fan I hope they get their act together next year.
Robbie (@robbie)
12th November 2021, 15:21
Max I think the odds are strong you will have more than this season with a Championship shot.
After this year it should be a bit less about the car and a bit more about the driver, and that is only going to bode well for Max. With cars less affected in dirty air it should be more about racecraft, and Max oozes that. I think the only thing that will prevent Max from more Championships is having a competitor with an utterly dominant car, and the new regs are meant to prevent that, and particularly next year sees everyone with pretty similar power units without one having a vast advantage ala 2014.
Max you’re a driver’s driver in a series about to head back to being driver vs driver. Go get ‘em. You’re going to rock it.
SjaakFoo (@sjaakfoo)
12th November 2021, 15:42
I mean, his odds aren’t bad, but he did have to wait 6 seasons to finally get a season where he had a legitimate shot, there’s no guarantee it won’t be six more for the next shot. It’s definitely the right approach to not assume you’ll get it, even when it’s evident to everyone else your odds are good.
rodewulf (@rodewulf)
12th November 2021, 16:40
@sjaakfoo
This is due specially to the overly optimistic monopoly-prone 2014 change in regulations. He and basically all non-Mercedes drivers had to wait an absurd amount of time to have a real shot at the title, something unseen in recent ages even if we concede that Formula 1 does have a tendency of dominant teams sporadically appearing and conquering everything or almost it all for a while. But the thing is, it took too much time for Mercedes dominance to be broken for good. The last 7 years were the least competitive from a racing standpoint for decades, if not in the whole Formula 1 history. With the new set of regs, it hardly can go as bad as it had been in recent seasons.
Patrick (@paeschli)
12th November 2021, 16:42
The mental on this kid is incredible. Based on their respective comments, I would assume it’s Verstappen that has 7 titles under his belt. I’ve never seen anyone dealing with the pressure of fighting for the title as well as him.
rodewulf (@rodewulf)
12th November 2021, 16:57
Let’s have some empathy for Max here: even a guy who was notoriously forsaken by Formula 1’s recent monopolistic spell, Fernando Alonso, has had more reasons to feel satisfied overall with his career than him. Whilst in Formula 1 Fernando already has respectable 2 WDCs, Max was left with none and not even a realistic perspective of a title for all this time before the current year. When Fernando and Lewis were at the corresponding point of their F1 careers, they already had at least one WDC each (2 and 1, respectively), and ages before. All those recent boring and predictable seasons could have hurt Max even more than Fernando, as a result, but those guys simply didn’t let it bring them down. This is what “skin in the game” and being “antifragile” is about. No one will ever achieve anything of value in highly competitive sports without this mentality.
KevinC (@kevinc)
12th November 2021, 21:25
Verstappen seems every bit as unfazed by the pressure as the Iceman, Kimi Raikkonen. Hamilton’s made a few comments recently trying to turn the pressure up on Max (which I’ve no problem with, for the record – all part of the fun and games!), but he just seems completely unaffected.
His attitude about not knowing will he ever be in this position again is completely correct too – he’s obviously a mega talent, who, all things being equal, should be a multiple WDC – but Fernando Alonso is a case study in the talent not always matching the opportunities. What amazes me is that knowing this might be his only chance should realistically be making him a little bit desperate – it’s not been like that whatsoever.
rodewulf (@rodewulf)
13th November 2021, 0:08
@kevinc
That’s why he said that what happens in the end of this season won’t change his life. Many people thought he was indifferent or even having a feeling that he’d lose, but it’s his way to keep himself calm and collected actually. It’s harder to keep your cool if you go with this mindset “if I fail my world is over”, it’s counterproductive and incites pressure, whilst if he accepts it might be his only chance but focusing on that chance rather than incessantly keep asking yourself if there will be more, it can help to ease the pressure. It’s kind of a stoic thing to just do your thing, and what you can’t control just let it go. Max really felt worse in some of those previous years in which he had less control of his fate, stuck in a nearly top competitive situation with a Red Bull fast enough to give some hype, but too slow yet against a utterly dominant Mercedes.