Norris fears for fans as ‘boring’ Verstappen snares pole
McLaren’s Lando Norris warned that Max Verstappen’s dominance of Formula One is in danger of turning fans away from the sport after the Dutchman powered to another pole for the Chinese Grand Prix.
Verstappen took his fifth consecutive pole of the season in Shanghai where he was once more all but untouchable. That was in stark contrast to Lewis Hamilton, with the Briton managing only 18th on the grid – his worst qualifying position since he crashed out in Brazil in 2017.
Verstappen has won three consecutive world championships, the past two with ease. He already has three victories from four races this season (he was denied a probable win in Australia by a brake failure) and the margin he enjoyed in qualifying here was enormous. He beat his Red Bull teammate, Sergio Pérez, by threetenths and was almost half a second clear of Fernando Alonso in third, to secure Red Bull’s 100th pole position.
After coming from fourth to win the sprint race by 13 seconds from Hamilton, who was powerless against the world champion, Verstappen is in position to take an untroubled run to the flag, in an inexorable march to a fourth title.
While Pérez is enjoying an improved season, he has not looked close to challenging his teammate. Norris, who qualified an impressive fourth, said Verstappen’s command of the sport would not be appealing to fans. “We are seeing more dominance than ever, so it is never going to be the best to watch and the only exciting races have been the ones that Max is not in,” he said.
“If you see the same driver winning every single time without a fight then of course it does start to become boring and that is obvious. You have got one of the best drivers ever in Formula One, in one of the most dominant cars and it is a combination that is deadly.”
In Japan, the Mercedes principal, Toto Wolff, was blunt in acknowledging that the title was in effect Verstappen’s after only
four meetings of a record 24-round season. It is an admission that will cause concern within F1, albeit one with which it is all but impossible to argue.
Hamilton endured a stark turnaround yesterday after he had claimed second place in the sprint. It was his “best result in a long time” but in qualifying he rued a mistake when he locked up at the hairpin.
With Mercedes still struggling to unlock the pace in their recalcitrant car, Hamilton said they were having to experiment with it and, as with the previous two seasons, it was proving no easy task. “Eighteenth is pretty bad,” he said. “When I was making setup changes, I was like: ‘The car can’t get any worse, surely’ and it did.”