Max Verstappen’s imperious march to second F1 title is a testament to his mastery
Dominant and imperious, there was an unmistakable air to how Max Verstappen secured his second Formula One world championship that had familiar echoes of the greats who have indelibly made their mark on the sport. This season has belonged to Verstappen who delivered with the command and control of a champion, with an almost untrammelled confidence and ease, yet it was a title for which he most assuredly had to work.
With victory at the Japanese Grand Prix, Verstappen and his Red Bull team have sealed the title with four races to go, a remarkable achievement his team will celebrate, even as they await the potentially serious FIA verdict on whether they overspent the budget cap last season.
Still only 25 years old he has taken 12 wins from 18 races to do so, a level of supremacy that has barely allowed his main rival, Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc, so much as a look-in. A scenario that had appeared unthinkable when the season began as F1 anticipated a tooth-and-nail scrap between two of its most talented young guns.
In pre-season testing the Ferrari was a rocket ship, quicker than the Red Bull and a mighty platform to attack tracks in Leclerc’s hands. The Red Bull, while fundamentally strong through the corners and with its low-drag design enjoying fearsome straightline speed, opened overweight and with understeer Verstappen had to fight.
Worse still reliability issues beset their opening races with Verstappen enduring mechanical DNFs in the first grand prix at Bahrain and the third in Australia. After Melbourne he was 46 points behind Leclerc and in sixth place, an almighty hurdle to overcome.
Yet he plugged away, eking out the best from the car, showing patience and composure that the engineers would develop it to suit his style and he impressively carved out three successive wins in Imola, Miami and Spain. By the ninth round in Canada, Red Bull had taken the weight out and given Verstappen the sharp front-end he enjoys and his superb win there was indicative of how comfortable he was.
He nailed qualifying in the wet and was unstoppable from there despite Ferrari potentially having the quicker race car. Shortly afterwards the former Red Bull driver Mark Webber had astutely already seen the signs, predicting that Verstappen would wrap up the title with three races to go.
He was out only in that the Dutchman has done it even sooner than expected and indeed had Ferrari not proved so prone to error by both driver and team they might have pushed it a little further but Webber believed the outcome would have been the same, as he paid tribute to Verstappen’s second title.
“Max is a phenomenal racer, wheel to wheel, one on one combat he is not going to back down from anyone,” he said. “He is a driver that now has so much confidence in his whole team and the car that he has got pretty much most of the pitlane psychologically beaten. We have seen it with Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher in the past but this is Max’s time right now, a combination of the Red Bull and his driving.”
He has also displayed a calm imperturbability, a world from the feisty indulgence of his youth. At Monaco, where the car’s inherent understeer was clearly frustrating and not to his liking, he worked through it, kept it clean and with a superb strategy call from Red Bull managed third, crucially, in front of Leclerc.
It was a telling moment, illustrating how complete a driver Verstappen now looks. One reinforced mid-season when three critical races surely sealed the deal, coming back to win from 10th in Hungary, from 14th in Belgium and from seventh in Italy. Each drive a piece of precision control, clearing the field without so much as a scratch. He was decisive and committed but also displayed inch-perfect, big-picture judgment.
Webber won nine races for Red Bull and the World Endurance Championship title with Porsche. He is now an ambassador for the German marque, who will bring their new 963 sportscar to Le Mans in an attempt to win for a record 20th time next year. As a longrespected driver he recognised only too well that Belgium was the moment when Verstappen had the hammer on the opposition.
“We saw it in Spa, no one defended and they were right not to, they knew he was just coming through like a train,” he said. “That was the race where effectively he had the whole field beaten before the race started, which was just extraordinary.”
Reaching such a remarkable point had been a slow build and one he had earned. Where Leclerc made two major errors, spinning at Imola and then crashing out at Paul Ricard, Verstappen’s only real slip was his off at the last round in Singapore, pushing too hard to make up places. It was out of keeping in a season during which he has been almost flawless but crucially also came in a race where he had already all but wrapped up the title. Regardless, his outstanding performance in the wet here at Suzuka on Sunday more than made up for it, a peerless run worthy of securing title.
As the season has progressed he and the car have only gone from strength to strength and for all the controversy over how he took his first title last season, the Dutchman has left no room for any doubt this time. On this form more will deservedly follow. “Over the next few years he is going to love and enjoy this,” said Webber. “He and the team are already absolutely the firm favourites for next year.”