Round-up: Verstappen dominates team mates more than Senna or Schumacher – Coulthard

40 comments on “Round-up: Verstappen dominates team mates more than Senna or Schumacher – Coulthard”

1. 

   Esploratore (@esploratore1)
   1st April 2025, 0:10

   Coulthard is right, obviously most of senna’s and schumacher’s team mates were average drivers too, so the comparison holds, although maybe the red bull car\team has features that make it harder to perform for other drivers than schumacher’s or senna’s cars had.
   1. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      1st April 2025, 0:11

      Alonso is another who demolished team mates perhaps more than schumacher and senna.
      1. 

         SteveP
         1st April 2025, 9:48

         Adding Alonso. Thanks, I now have a list of three that didn’t have their dad hanging around bullying/pressuring the team to give their son preferential treatment. Not sure that Flavio would have let that happen.

         But “Demolished” ??
         Is that what he did to the rookie teammate he had in 2007?
      2. 

         Iosif (@afonic)
         1st April 2025, 10:51

         Except Lewis though.
   2. 

      anon
      1st April 2025, 6:25

      @esploratore1 you need to bear in mind that Coulthard is still employed by Red Bull to promote the brand and provide advertising for the team, so he isn’t an entirely neutral figure in this situation.
      1. 

         S Arkazam
         1st April 2025, 9:15

         Maybe you should declare as well for/with who(m) you work and where your allegiances lie ;)
   3. 

      Tifoso1989 (@tifoso1989)
      1st April 2025, 12:48

      So Prost is an average driver now ?
2. 

   PB
   1st April 2025, 0:36

   Verstappen’s team mates haven’t been as good as Senna’s or Schumachers, IMHO.
   1. 

      pcxmac (@pcxmac)
      1st April 2025, 1:09

      Red Bull execs never let his teammates get close guys. News flash.
      1. 

         Nikos (@exeviolthor)
         1st April 2025, 8:13

         Ricciardo was pretty close to him and the team always let them race each other.
         1. 

            Philip (@philipgb)
            2nd April 2025, 10:37

            The thing is as highly regarded as Ricciardo was, he was up against Max in the early years of his career. It only took until the last few races of 2017 for Max to have the measure of him and honestly if you put Ricciardo in the car opposite him now I can’t help but feel that we would just see the same thing as almost every other team mate
            1. 

               Davethechicken
               2nd April 2025, 13:38

               Riccardo out scored Max in 2018 until he announced he was leaving after Baku, incidentally where Daniel was again clearly the quicker driver being held up by Max until they famously collided.
               Once that announcement was made he had hardly any race weekends not affected by car reliability issues, so really this can’t be judged.
               There is a website where someone collated Riccardo’s mechanical wows of 2018 which were astonishing.
            2. 

               Philip (@philipgb)
               2nd April 2025, 17:29

               Baku was the 4th race of the season and they both retired in Bahrain. So that’s a sample size of two races he outscored him before announcing his move, if we discount his mechanical woes then only in one race after that where they both finished did Ricciardo finish ahead
   2. 

      S Arkazam
      1st April 2025, 9:18

      Verstappen’s team mates haven’t been as good as Senna’s or Schumachers, IMHO.

      So old Verstappen would beat young Verstappen’s teammates as well? ;)
      1. 

         XV
         2nd April 2025, 0:47

         Depends on how you define “beat”.
         1. 

            SteveP
            2nd April 2025, 7:14

            Depends on how you define “beat”.

            Excellent word play
         2. 

            S Arkazam
            2nd April 2025, 10:44

            ;)
3. 

   Velocityboy (@velocityboy)
   1st April 2025, 0:58

   With Schumacher, Irvine and Barrichello were the hot young driver’s at the time Ferrari hired them. Red Bull aren’t even trying to get Max a competent team mate.
   1. 

      MichaelN
      1st April 2025, 8:40

      Exactly, too many people base their opinion on how these drivers looked after Schumacher, rather than before. It was Schumacher who made them look average. And Barrichello certainly didn’t seem that bad when he won multiple races in 2009 alongside Button, and even at Ferrari. Massa, as well, gave both Hamilton and Räikkönen plenty to think about. And Schumacher dominated him even in his last Ferrari year.

      Some of Schumachers teammates at Benetton were a bit middling, but the rest were solid. More like Ricciardo, whom Verstappen often struggled to beat, although he did come out ahead over the course of their partnership.
   2. 

      Iosif (@afonic)
      1st April 2025, 10:53

      Red Bull would be lucky to have a Barrichello the guy was solid. Massa was very fast as well.

      The only driver of similar level and skill Verstappen has had as a teammate is Ricciardo.
4. 

   David BR (@david-br)
   1st April 2025, 1:09

   Maybe Verstappen combines Senna’s supreme talent and Schumacher’s own outstanding talent, relentless consistency and ruthless will to win. Add to that combination the fact that only Ricciardo was experienced and good enough to match Verstappen some of the time, for a while, and the gulf becomes a bit more explicable. There’s just too much skill difference, experience with the Red Bull and Verstappen’s desire to extract every advantage possible. If a team mate starts to get close, the response is astonishing: the stand out race for me being Miami 2023 when Pérez had a good start to the season and Verstappen started low on the grid but breezed past Pérez to win. Crushing. Or when a rival from another team becomes a title threat – again the response on track is brutal, as Norris discovered last year.
5. 

   Drop Saudi
   1st April 2025, 1:17

   Schumacher pre comeback was like Verstappen, I’m glad he did comeback but Rosberg messed up his record.
   1. 

      CarWars (@maxv)
      1st April 2025, 13:09

      Thats what Rosberg does, mess up the records of the greats.
6. 

   An Sionnach
   1st April 2025, 1:43

   Prost beat Senna over their time as team mates. de Angelis ran him close in his first season with Lotus (1985), even though most of the team’s efforts were focused on Senna. This lead to de Angelis quitting the team. Senna then vetoed Derek Warwick as both an equal number one or a number two. Warwick had already signed his contract and was surprised when he went to Lotus around the end of December 1985 to find that they (apologetically) would not sign the contract themselves. This left him without a drive for ’86. Senna hadn’t just asked the team about this, he had piled pressure on the sponsors to deny Warwick the seat. Fast forward to the press conference after Estoril in 1992 where Senna attacked Prost for vetoing him from joining Williams. Prost had recommended Senna be hired at McLaren for 1988 and he would have raced with anyone else at Williams. The problem was personal, not a sporting one. Senna framed the veto from Prost as being in some way unsporting. Different standards for himself, as usual. After that, Senna didn’t have a decent team mate until… well, Damon Hill was okay. He was ahead on points after three races and did not seem to have the same trouble driving the car.

   A nice note about Warwick was that, when he heard about the death of de Angelis in 1986, he thought it would be best not to ring Bernie straight away about the drive. When Bernie contacted him over a week later, he was told that other drivers had called him straight away and he liked that Warwick hadn’t.

   Schumacher didn’t have many great team mates, either. Up to his original retirement there may have been no other driver who would beat him in the same team, anyway.

   It would be interesting to see how Max would fare against other team mates. I expect he would beat anyone. The question is by how much?
   1. 

      Alesici
      1st April 2025, 12:33

      Your point about Senna being hypocritical sounds reasonable, though it’s worth noting that Senna tried to justify denying Warwick the Lotus drive by saying that Lotus were too small and poor to field two potential race winning cars. That was clearly not the case for Williams. So that aspect does help Senna’s case.

      Regarding Coulthard’s comments, he and everyone here seems to be forgetting that the field spread was massive back then compared to this year, so back in the 80s and early 90s, instead of being last, a Lawson might have still qualified on the front row even if he was 0.8 seconds off his hypothetical Max teammate on pole. So Senna’s dominance is hidden by that.
      1. 

         SteveP
         1st April 2025, 18:37

         Regarding Coulthard’s comments, he and everyone here seems to be forgetting that the field spread was massive back then compared to this year, so back in the 80s and early 90s, instead of being last, a Lawson might have still qualified on the front row even if he was 0.8 seconds off his hypothetical Max teammate on pole.

         Take Lawson’s fastest lap as a percentage of Max’s and the difference is 0.517 percent. Positions at finish 4 & 12

         Norris/Piastri difference is 0.069 percent (Norris faster) positions 2 & 1

         Margins these are indeed finer, but it also depends on what parameter you are measuring/comparing.
      2. 

         An Sionnach
         2nd April 2025, 0:04

         In the Warwick interview he said he understood that Senna and the top drivers all had this selfishness and he didn’t have any ill will toward him. He also said that he agreed that Lotus probably couldn’t support two number ones. The contract they had given him, which he had signed, was for equal number one. Senna was fast and a great qualifier and could do things that others could not at that time. It was close between himself and Prost. Warwick was looking forward to the challenge, but had no illusions that he was going to come out on top. Would have been nice to see what would have happened.

         In Lauda’s book he said he was initially wary of Prost because he seemed friendly and he was wondering if he was trying to worm his way in with the team. To his surprise, he was just a nice young man and they got on quite well as team mates. I’m mixing this in a little with Warwick’s observation on the top drivers having perhaps a similar selfishness. I’m sure Prost wasn’t unselfish, but there are certainly degrees of it. Lauda was frank about his own selfishness in life. He knew what he needed to achieve his goals and he would just go and get it.

         I think you’re right about the field spread. I re-watched all 1994 race starts lately to see how often Schumacher had an amazing start (it was only at Magny-Cours) and I was surprised to see how bad so many of the starts were. Even Schumacher didn’t get away that well on a number of occasions. Hill and Mansell made him look other-worldly, even when he had been slow off the line.
      3. 

         An Sionnach
         2nd April 2025, 0:07

         Of course, I’d recommend the Warwick interview. He comes across very well. Listening to his story, I’d have liked to see him do better. If he had had the same momentum and breaks as Senna, where would he have ended up?
   2. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      2nd April 2025, 2:09

      You didn’t portrait senna vs hill fairly: senna wasn’t used to the car and was taken out of 2 of the first 3 races, and in brazil spun and retired, but how was the situation just before that? Hill was a lap behind, which says a lot about their pace.
      1. 

         An Sionnach
         2nd April 2025, 8:17

         The comparison with Hill is only three races, of course. I think it was Hakkinen who tapped Senna in one of the races, ending it? I’d have liked to see the whole season, of course. Senna was still qualifying well. Hill was still more comfortable in the car and I don’t think the comparison was inaccurate. That’s just the way it was.

         I think you said that about Schumacher last week. I thought it was an interesting thing to say, and probably correct. I don’t have an opinion as to who would have won between him and Alonso. That’s one of those things you’d have to see to find out.
   3. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      2nd April 2025, 2:15

      And interesting compliment towards schumacher (that likely no one in the field could’ve beaten him as a team mate till 2006), I believe the only one is maybe alonso in the last 2 seasons, as he was 11 years younger than schumacher and seemed to make less mistakes at that point, as evidenced by 2006 with similar cars and reliability.
7. 

   Esmiz (@esmiz)
   1st April 2025, 8:42

   I think we’ve forgotten about Schumacher at Benetton. At Ferrari, Irivine and Barrichello were closer, but Schumacher destroyed all his second-seat teammates at Benetton in a similar way to what Verstappen is doing at Red Bull, and possibly for similar reasons. That Benetton was 100% to his liking.
   1. 

      Esploratore (@esploratore1)
      2nd April 2025, 2:00

      Yes, that is true, there’s no comparison between the gaps he had at benetton and the ones he had at ferrari, but also I believe back in that and senna’s era it was possible to put a bigger gap between team mates, then they generally got closer, more so if you think about the current era; remember once senna was able to qualify 1,5 sec faster than prost, you wouldn’t see that gap between best and worst driver nowadays, let alone between verstappen and leclerc.
8. 

   PlosslF1 (@f1-ploss)
   1st April 2025, 19:40

   “Round-up: Verstappen dominates team mates more than Senna or Schumacher – Coulthard”
   I dont think that has the own Coulthard thinks it has….
9. 

   Chris Horton
   1st April 2025, 20:01

   I strongly suspect Senna and Schumacher had more conventional driving styles that their team mates had less trouble with adapting to.

   Verstappen is very talented, but let’s not get carried away.
   1. 

      DMC
      1st April 2025, 22:59

      Max looks very similar i driving style to Michael to me, and i remember ross brawn saying berrichello was better in terms of feedback than Michael because Michael would extract a lap time out of anything you gave him.
10. 

    DMC
    1st April 2025, 22:59

    Max looks very similar i driving style to Michael to me, and i remember ross brawn saying berrichello was better in terms of feedback than Michael because Michael would extract a lap time out of anything you gave him.
    1. 

       An Sionnach
       2nd April 2025, 8:20

       Yes. They both seem to have/had the ability to drive pointy, unforgiving cars.
11. 

    Applebook
    2nd April 2025, 3:50

    Coulthard is the same guy who said that Lance Stroll was a great driver.
    1. 

       SteveP
       2nd April 2025, 17:40

       That’s a balancing viewpoint, he says Lance is good, he says Max is great – balances out somewhere near the middle.

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