Will Max REALLY ram Lewis off the road?
He’ll do everything to win, says Verstappen’s dad
JThis is the most poisonous fight I have covered in the sport
UST how far below the belt the fists of this extraordinary world championship will descend, we will discover on Sunday here in the concluding of 22 rounds in Abu Dhabi.
There are more than a few imponderables that cause us to gulp in anticipation but the one that touches the rawest nerve is whether Max Verstappen will ram Lewis Hamilton off the road.
After Sunday’s toxic and chaotic race in Saudi Arabia, won by Hamilton with Verstappen in second place, the two best drivers in motor racing are level on points, though the Dutchman edges it 9-8 on race victories. If neither should finish the duskinto-night race down the road in Yas Marina, Verstappen would win his first title on countback.
Nobody in the Verstappen camp is naive enough to cough up the possible depths to which they would stretch to accomplish their dream but I still put the deciding week’s most nagging question to the young pretender’s father, Jos.
‘If it came down to it, would Max ram Lewis off the road?’ I asked.
‘I don’t think that will happen,’ said the 49-year-old, himself an exuberant driver in the Nineties and early 2000s.
‘Max absolutely wants to win. He will definitely go for it. He will clearly try to beat him. He will do everything to get the win, that’s for sure. It will be exciting.’
The phrase that echoes is ‘do everything to win’. Make of that what you will. If Verstappen were to exercise the option that is open only to the man who holds the advantage, no punishment bar expulsion from the world championship itself would prevent him from claiming his first title.
Alain Prost, Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher have all jaywalked that fine line and they are heroes to many. An earlier era would never have dreamed of it.
Not Juan Manuel Fangio, Sir Stirling Moss or Sir Jackie Stewart. It was an even more dangerous game in those days, life and death calculated into every move, and sharp practice earned a rapid rebuke from their brave brethren.
This is the most poisonous title fight I have covered for this newspaper, well, at least since 2007. That was a mucky affair that pitted Hamilton against Fernando Alonso in the same McLaren, the young pretender against the double and reigning world champion.
‘Spygate’, McLaren’s illegal possession of 720 pages of Ferrari technical secrets, cast its dark shadow over that one. Alonso, given to paranoia and presented with plenty of reasons to indulge such neurosis by what he perceived to be internal favouritism towards his rookie team-mate, threatened to tell all about the spying subterfuge to the FIA unless he was given outright No 1 status, to the chagrin of his team principal Ron Dennis.
However, nothing this century can beat this week’s final-round tension as Verstappen and Hamilton prepare for Sunday’s showdown. For Hamilton, the fear, I guess, is that if he does not clinch his eighth world title now, his time may never come. He is 37 in January and the regulation changes next season wag a finger of doubt in his face.
For Verstappen, there is markedly less to lose. But there is still a lot to be abjectly sore about. It would always be said of him that Verstappen was a trier who could never beat Hamilton.
The mathematical, logical advantage is with Verstappen but only especially if he presses the button marked ‘N’ for Nuclear. TITLE FINALE: 1pm Sunday, Abu Dhabi. LIVE on Sky Sports F1.