F1
Giant Steps
Supremely gifted, and newly gilded thanks to a world championship title, driver Max Verstappen rolls into the 2022 season as Formula 1’s new MVP.
But if you study his path to glory, he has always had an uncompromising competitive fire and seemed destined for greatness.
Let’s start in February 2022. It’s been about two months since Max Verstappen muscled his way past seven-time F1 champion Lewis Hamilton to claim his first world championship title on a hugely controversial final lap of the final race of an epic 2021 season. Now, as he begins preseason testing ahead of the 2022 campaign, Verstappen is asked what it means to be the man to beat.
There’s a pause, and then, with the cut-to-the-chase frankness that has been the hallmark of everything the 24-year-old says (and does in the car), he drops the accelerator. Verstappen bounces the question into the weeds. “It doesn’t matter,” he shrugs. “Even after winning the championship, my ambition is still to win races and try to fight for the championship again.”
And with that blunt answer, Verstappen hits the reset button. That was then, this is now. There are new problems to solve; another chapter is waiting to be written.
But while the F1 champion’s nature is to distill everything to its essence—to seek a signal-to-noise ratio that removes all distractions and leaves only fundamentals—the truth is that his 2021 title win matters more than anything. His game, and by extension that of the whole sport, has been changed. The truth is that the noise around Formula 1’s newest superstar has become a cacophony.
Without any doubt, the Dutchman’s world championship has propelled him into the stratosphere. This March, Verstappen inked a contract extension that will keep him at Red Bull Racing until the end of the 2028 season, a deal speculated by insiders to be valued at $250 million for the five-year term. This makes Verstappen not only Hamilton’s on-track rival; now he can take their parity to the bank.
So as the 2022 season hits its stride, Verstappen will be thrust into and portrayed as six different characters at once. He is a superstar, villain, hero, challenger, target and champion, all rolled into one. His title success has elevated him to a new level of existence.
But if you scroll back through time—from the epic encounters of 2021 to his hot-headed early years in F1 and way back to his formative years at the wheel—Verstappen has been studying for each one of those roles for years. Let’s hit the rewind button and examine exactly how he got here.
The Dutchman celebrates his world championship with a trophy and smile.
© Getty Images
The infamous win
Now it is December 12, 2021. A lovely day in Abu Dhabi that becomes a historically controversial day.
In the final moments of 2021’s final grand prix, Verstappen’s charge toward the title appears to be over. Archrival Lewis Hamilton is 12 seconds clear in the lead and Verstappen is running out of road. But then, seven laps from the flag, Canadian driver Nicholas Latifi hits the wall and the safety car is released. Verstappen pits for new tires. Hamilton, expecting the race to be completed under the safety car, stays out.
Now comes one of the most controversial episodes in the history of a sport well versed in divisive moments. Race director Michael Masi allows a handful of lapped cars to pass and then restarts the race. Armed with fresh tires and with the gap to Hamilton eradicated, Verstappen pounces. He shoulders the stunned Mercedes driver aside soon after the restart and claims the race win—and the 2021 crown.
He is portrayed as six characters at once—a superstar, villain, hero, challenger, target and champion.
“It’s been manipulated, man!” howls Hamilton, sparking an unprecedented winter of discontent for many in the sport. Hamilton retreats into such a fortress of solitude that he finally departs in the week of Mercedes’ 2022 car launch.
Masi would soon be vilified and eventually replaced for a decision that many viewed as affecting the destination of the title. But what about Verstappen?
As has happened so often in his bruising path to the top, the Dutch driver is cast as the pantomime villain, a playground bully who pummeled his way to the title with a combative energy that caused collisions and controversy, whose team pressured officials to restart a race that should have finished under caution.
But Verstappen refuses to play along with that script. Questioned by Dutch newspaper De Telegraaf, the new champion is sanguine in the face of suggestions that some are trying to lessen the value of his title. “If they know me well, they know I don’t care,” he says. “The losing team will try to take the shine off it a bit. But on the winning side, it still feels good, I can assure you.”
Verstappen wears a 3D knit jumper by AlphaTauri.
© AlphaTauri
The path to glory
But the 2021 campaign was not one race. It certainly wasn’t one lap. Verstappen raced to win the whole season.
It’s all too easy to crystallize Verstappen’s ascent around those dramatic moments in Abu Dhabi. Too simplistic to portray him as a driver who bullied his archrival for the title. But in the white-hot fury that followed the end of the 2021 season, Verstappen’s singular achievements across the course of F1’s longest-ever campaign were all too frequently brushed aside.
The Dutchman wants to talk about this. He is in Barcelona for preseason testing early in 2022. There he tells me that his championship was built over nine months of racing and not the handful of minutes it took for the race in Abu Dhabi to be turned on its head.
“A championship is won over the season, right? Not because of the last lap,” Verstappen says. “If you look at the year, the title would normally have been decided way earlier. It is just that I was taken out twice and had some bad luck with tire blowouts. It came down to the last race because of all that misfortune. Look at the stats. That usually gives you a picture of how the season went.”
So let’s take a look at the stats. The last-minute win in Abu Dhabi was the Dutch driver’s 10th of the season. Had Hamilton won, it would have been his ninth victory. During the 2021 season, Verstappen was on pole 10 times to Hamilton’s eight. In all, the Dutch driver finished first or second 18 times over the season. His ninth-place in Hungary was his only nonpodium finish all year and in two of his three failures to finish, the Red Bull driver was in the top two when he exited the race.
Not surprisingly, Christian Horner agrees. “What really stood out for me is in moments of adversity he kept believing, kept pushing, kept driving the team forward,” says the Red Bull team boss. This comment comes at last December’s FIA prize-giving ceremony, at which Verstappen is officially presented with the trophy. “It lifted everybody around him. Particularly in the second half of the year when we didn’t have the fastest package, he kept us in this championship.”
I have no doubt he is the best we have seen in one of our cars. In terms of raw ability and commitment, he’s the best we’ve ever seen.
Verstappen is more modest when asked about his achievements, insisting that Formula 1 remains a hugely car- dependent sport. “Individually you can make differences, but if the car is a second off, you’re not going to win the race,” he says. “A driver can influence the result a bit, especially in crucial moments, with decision-making or when weather conditions are changing, but when you look at raw pace, if the car is the quickest, that will help a lot more.”
Horner, however, has no hesitation in classifying his young driver as the ultimate performance differentiator. “I have no doubt he is the best we have seen in one of our cars. In terms of outright raw ability and commitment he’s the best driver we’ve seen,” the team boss tells Britain’s The Times. “The standout moments for me come when you turn up somewhere like Jeddah [Saudi Arabia], nobody has seen the circuit before and Max goes out and is 2 and a half seconds clear of anybody else. It takes half an hour for anyone to get close to his time. He’s got a fundamental, natural ability, which means he’s driving with less effort at the limit than other drivers. Very rarely do you see drivers with that. Lewis has that. Max has that.”
Veteran F1 star Fernando Alonso agrees. “Max is driving one step ahead of all of us,” says the 2005 and 2006 champion, routinely acknowledged as one of F1’s greatest drivers, right before the title showdown in Abu Dhabi. “We saw [his qualifying] lap in Jeddah until he touched the wall in the last corner. That lap was coming from him, not Red Bull. Max, overall, across the year, was driving one step ahead of everyone.”
“A championship is won over the season, not the last lap," Verstappen says.
© Getty Images
The slow burn
Now it’s 2016, the year Verstappen starts driving for Red Bull Racing. And the guy who will later insist that Formula 1 is a car-dependent sport is in the trenches, learning that lesson the hard way.
Over the following four years there will be standout performances, sporadic wins and moments of genius that serve to illustrate his abundant talent. But there will also be episodes of hot-headed behavior that reveal his frustration at having to push his car past acceptable limits just to approach genuine competition for race wins.
He’s racing in the midst of a period during which Mercedes’ mastery of hybrid engines has seen them take 111 wins from the 160 races held between 2014 and 2021. Red Bull’s cars, hindered by underpowered Renault engines, are holding Verstappen back. A single win in 2016 becomes two in 2017, and Verstappen notches two more in 2018.
A radical change is needed. Enter Honda. Bruised by a failed and increasingly rancorous three-year argument with partner McLaren, the Japanese automaker retreats to the less pressured environs of Faenza, Italy, and Scuderia Toro Rosso. In 2018, Red Bull’s sister squad effectively acts as an R&D platform for Honda, and the following season its redesigned and optimized unit is transported across to Red Bull Racing.
Now it’s 2019 and everything is different. Honda’s first win in F1 in 13 years comes at the Austrian Grand Prix. More wins follow, in Germany and Brazil, and in 2020, Verstappen wins the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix and the season finale in Abu Dhabi. More importantly, in 2020 he finishes on the podium 11 times. A crucial technical rule change enacted before the 2021 season that arguably hurts Mercedes more than other teams doesn’t hurt Verstappen’s chances. And so the stage is set for the Dutchman to finally become world champion.
“Did it surprise me it took that long to win the title? Honestly, I never thought about it too much,” says Verstappen in 2022, reflecting on his triumphant 2021 season. “You need to get the opportunities right, to drive for the fastest team or at least have a car capable of winning races. We finally had that last year—you could clearly see as a team as well we were really in the fight, and we managed to win the championship.”
Verstappen made his Formula 1 debut in 2015 and never looked back.
© Getty Images/Red Bull Content Pool
The mark of a champion
Now it’s 2014. Midway through his rookie F3 season, Verstappen joins the Red Bull Junior Team and just days later it’s announced that the following year he’ll race in F1 for Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri). He’s still just 16 years old.
In his debut at the 2015 Australian Grand Prix, the teenager becomes F1’s youngest race driver. At the following race he becomes the sport’s youngest points scorer. And by the end of a solid, if occasionally wayward, first season, he’s awarded Rookie of the Year.
But if Verstappen’s maiden campaign lights a fire of excitement, the next one goes supernova as he fully reveals his ability to drag the outstanding from the ordinary and to do it in double-quick time.
In early 2016, at Red Bull Racing, Russian hopeful Daniil Kvyat, who was vaulted to the senior team with unseemly haste following four-time champion Sebastian Vettel’s defection to Ferrari, starts the season with a series of hapless collisions, earning him the nickname “the Torpedo.” The Russian’s travails give Verstappen, who is desperate to get into a more competitive package, and his team all the ammunition they need. Ten days before the fifth race of the season, Kvyat is sent back to the junior squad and Verstappen is elevated to the senior team.
However, anyone expecting the Dutchman to settle into his new squad with a low-key weekend of cautious progress and steady integration knows nothing of the intensity and capacity to deal with multiple inputs that Verstappen would bring to his opening race.
Every single year I just go into my season trying to beat everyone else, and it’s the same this year.
In qualifying, Verstappen claims a stunning fourth place on the grid behind experienced teammate Daniel Ricciardo and front-row Mercedes pair Hamilton and Nico Rosberg. And on Sunday, when the warring Mercedes-title rivals collide at the start and Ricciardo drops out of contention due to a questionable pit-stop strategy, Verstappen seizes the opportunity to take the lead with a third of the race remaining.
Chasing him down is 2007 champion and Ferrari veteran Kimi Räikkönen. Verstappen remains ice-cool, however, and after faultlessly fending off repeated attacks, the Dutch teenager crosses the line to become F1’s youngest-ever winner—at the tender age of 18 years, 7 months and 16 days. “It’s a nice record,” Verstappen says afterward. “But it doesn’t matter at what age you win, as long as you win.”
Verstappen, backed by his father, Jos—also an F1 driver—at a 2010 race.
© MOTORSPORT IMAGES
The tough love
Now it’s way back in 2012. The kid is still months away from his 15th birthday. He’s already been racing for a decade, already been racing karts on an international stage for a couple years.
Verstappen has been winning since he first stepped into a go-kart at the age of 4 and a half. “It was at Genk [in Belgium], it was on the rental circuit, it was with a very small go-kart,” Verstappen’s father, Jos, would recount on Red Bull Racing’s podcast in a 2020 interview. “After a few laps, he did the whole track flat out. And because of the vibration of the kart the carburetor was falling off. We did it for one day, and then immediately bought him a bigger go-kart.”
This success isn’t really a surprise if you examine his family pedigree. The younger Verstappen’s mother, Sophie Kumpen, was a championship-winning go-karter in her own right. His uncle Anthony Kumpen competed at Le Mans and in NASCAR’s European Series. It was father Jos, though, who best understood the path to Formula 1. A solid if ultimately unsuccessful F1 driver in the 1990s, Jos’s brightest moment came in 1994, when he was teammate to F1 legend Michael Schumacher at Benetton. After losing that seat he toughed it out for a further nine seasons at a variety of struggling lower-tier teams before eventually admitting defeat. He did everything he could to make sure the same fate would not befall his son.
Practice was relentless, with Jos at the wheel of the family van as he and Max drove 60,000 miles across Europe every year pursuing title after title. This road-worn camaraderie gives father and son a unique bond. There is a lot of what writers and analysts might describe as “tough love.”
The intense nature of their relationship is in full effect following a 2012 world championship kart race. After a dominant start to the week, Max, overeager to regain a lost place, fluffs an overtaking move, crashes and loses out on the glory. He finishes second. And his father is apoplectic.
“I was upset, but he was really upset and disappointed in me,” Max says, recounting the episode on Red Bull Racing’s podcast. “We sat in the van on the way home. I wanted to talk to my dad, but he didn’t want to talk. I kept trying, and at one point he said ‘Get out. I don’t want to talk to you anymore!’ ”
Verstappen at Bahrain International Circuit in March 2022.
© Mark Thommpson/Red Bull Content Pool
The open road
Now it is time to look forward. Like most elite sportspeople, Verstappen is a restless animal. “We don’t need to think about it anymore,” he says, basically ending the conversation about the past. “Every single year I just go into my season trying to beat everyone else, and it’s the same this year.”
No doubt, the 2022 season will bring new challenges. F1 has undergone its biggest makeover in decades. The cars are radically different, the driving demands vastly altered. And after three inconclusive opening rounds, there’s a new race to contend with, in Miami. “The circuit looks interesting and I will need to approach it a bit differently,” he says. “You can’t be as on the limit straight away as you might be at a normal track. If you make a mistake, it’s easier to hit the wall. The cars are fine, but the tires are quite a bit bigger. Visibility is reduced. On a track like Barcelona that’s less of a problem, but when you go to street circuits like Miami, it’s going to be more challenging. But we’ve done these things many times before. It’s what you want. Yeah, I’m looking forward to it.”
Keep up with Max and Red Bull Racing this season: