INTERVIEW Five years to become champion? It can come earlier...
MAX VERSTAPPEN, 18, ON LIFE AS THE ULTIMATE BOY RACER
ON Red Bull’s floating motorhome, in the boats below and the bars outside, the champagnec-link of Monaco’s carnival unfolded under the lingering sun.
Through that sway of parties, one of the principality’s youngest and newest residents went home by scooter last night. Not even a sideways glance at the glitz by the teenager for whom there are no apparent distractions on his A-road to motor racing fame.
Max Verstappen is living a few lanes away from the Formula One track, having uprooted from Maasbracht, a Dutch town on the Belgian border, half-anhour’s drive from Maastricht, at the end of last year. At 18, he is on his own, tax status here being attractive when you are on a contract that makes you a millionaire at the stroke of a pen.
‘I didn’t expect to be living here at this age,’ he said ahead of his ‘home’ race. ‘But I am travelling a lot so I am not completely alone many days. But I could always help myself out. I don’t need someone to amuse me.’
Most of the grid live in the area. A number of them, including Britain’s Jenson Button get together to cycle around the hilly terrain. But Verstappen has kept to himself. It is pretty much a case of all work and no play in paradise.
When he won the Spanish Grand Prix a fortnight ago — at the record age of 18 years and 228 days — he celebrated with colleagues at Red Bull, the team he had joined from Toro Rosso only a week earlier. ‘It wasn’t wild,’ said Verstappen. That is not his style. Tequila a la Lewis Hamilton? ‘And a shisha pipe?’ he smiles, proving he has a sense of humour. ‘That’s how he likes to live. It’s fine. He’s performing. He’s a threetime world champion.’
Verstappen does not speak about films he likes or books he’s read or the box sets he’ss just watched. A CD collecection? Come off it. He can’t cook. Putting g aside his involvement in Tuesday’s annual pre-Monaco football match, a 3-1 win for the drivers over the all- stars, entertainment for young Maxx usually comes with an n engine attached, and has done since he watcheded a family friend racing in a kkart.t Verstappen was three at the time.
He took up karting himself aged four and a half. From then on he was either racing or preparing his machine with his father Jos in a workshop at the back of a local roofing company. Motor racing was in his blood, for as well as his father having competed in 107 grands prix, his mother, Sophie Kumpenp won two Belgian championships. HiHis own rise was fast, nanaturally: after a glitterining karting career he wwent into the Europpean Formula Three championship in 2014, winning 10 races, before Red Bull’s junior team, TToro Rosso, decided he would partner Carlos SainSainz Jnr last year. He was ththen 17, too young to ddrivei on his own in his homeland. Then Mercedes and Ferrari sniffed around. Red Bull were aware of their interest and moved fast to promote the Dutch driver — he takes the nationality from his father — to their top team and tie him down, hence his debut in Spain.
Victory made a mockery of those who said he was too young to be in Formula One. He says, justifiably, that he has ticked off several of his ambitions earlier than expected. But a big record awaits, namely the youngest world champion, a record held by Sebastian Vettel, then 23.
‘Five years?’ he says of his titlewinning timescale. ‘It can always come earlier… it depends on the situation. The very positive thing is next year we have new rules, so it’s the same for everyone. Some teams can take advantage of that — hopefully we can.’
Verstappen is confident in his ability but is neither showy nor arrogant. He goes about his work with diligence. His team boss Christian Horner notes that Verstappen, like Vettel, remains calm enough to ask the crucial questions and take on board the relevant detail.
It indicates that he is not operating at the edge — a quality that one of the most perceptive of driver judges, Sir Jackie Stewart, rates as a crucial requirement of a successful practitioner. However, a second consecutive victory will be hard to achieve given that he is using an old engine whereas his team-mate Daniel Ricciardo has been given a new one.
Verstappen attributes his thoughtful driving to his father’s influence. ‘ He was very fast, but sometimes a bit out of control, not thinking enough about every situation,’ he said. ‘ Dad has tried to take that out of me, so I have his best bits, and not his worst bits.’
Jos was sometimes hard when Max failed and once refused to speak to him for a week after a second-lap crash in a world championship kart race in Sarno, Italy.
‘I had got pole,’ recalled Max. ‘It was one of the easiest races of my life but I messed it up and was out of the race.
‘My father was very p***** off. He did not help me put the kart in the van. I tried to speak to him on the way back but he would not talk to me. Then, for the next seven days, not a word.
‘He was always very hard on me, but in a fair way, not to put me down or destroy me.’
Jos remains Max’s manager but has withdrawn from speaking to the media. ‘Of course he would have liked me to stay a bit closer than Monaco, but that’s how it goes,’ said Verstappen Jnr. ‘It’s a process. It’s getting more and more and more (detached).’
Jos knows that he is fast becoming known as Max Verstappen’s dad.