As is well known, Damon Hill (1996) was the first world champion in F1, son of world champion: his father Graham had won the title in 1962 and in ’68. Exactly twenty years after Damon, here is Nico Rosberg, son of Keke’s 1982 world champion. And Jacques Villeneuve, ’97 world champion, would have probably done the same with his dad Gilles, if the terrible killing flight of Zolder ’82 had not taken the stage. Not to mention Alberto Ascari. The 1952 and ’53 champion followed Antonio in the dynastic line, who was not world champion only because at his time there was not yet a World Cup.
The world championship succession is therefore no longer news, but Max Verstappen a small whim in this special book of family records he took it off: he is the first champion son of a podium level dad in the racing world (Jos, 17 points in F1 and two third places in ’94 with Benetton at alongside Michael Schumacher), but also of a mother capable of passing on an important genetic heritage in terms of speed on wheels. Let’s talk about Sophie Kumpen: Belgian, Jos’s wife for five years but before she had been more than brilliant at the wheel of a kart and racing cars with covered wheels. In her turn Sophie had evidently received some very fast gene from her paternal family branch. Not from his parent, Robert, who is a sportsman, but from the world of football. She but her uncle Paul and cousin Anthony, drivers respectively in rallycross and in endurance races. Belgian by birth, the girl started early with karts and immediately, according to the first chronicles of her, she played hard with male opponents. In 1991 she was ahead of Giancarlo Fisichella (who is two years older than her) in the Formula K World Championship. the others) also Jarno Trulli. And this was the peak of her career. “Sophie and another girl, Lotta Hellberg, were doing really strong,” Button recalled in a recent podcast.
In those days, however, Formula 1 was no longer the receptive territory for women that it had been for example in the 70s, when Lella Lombardi won the only point finish (Jarama ’75 with a March) in pink. in the history of the Grand Prix. In the mid-1990s the only shining example in single-seater racing was across the Atlantic and bore the name of Danika Patrick. In Europe, there was little place for women to run. Perhaps this motivation also convinced Sophie Kumpen to marry Jos. It was May 1996: a wedding for a few close friends in a small church in Godsheide, a stone’s throw from Hasselt which is the closest town to the Zolder circuit. A few months and she was pregnant with Max, born in September ’97 and suffered a hurricane in karts and in minor formulas, so much so that she deserved her debut in the F1 World Championship at the age of 18, her first victory in Spain 2016 at 18 and a half, etc. . And this is the story we all know.
Today Max is the most obvious genetic selection success to be found on a racing circuit. The old Abbot Gregor Mendel was not mistaken: already in the mid-nineteenth century he had discovered in an empirical way the primary laws of the transmission of hereditary characteristics; the discovery of DNA, the following century, provided scientific confirmation. Will there be a genetic map of the reigning world champion, to compare with those of his parents Sophie and Jos? It would be an interesting observation, and some particularly uninhibited businessmen might encourage blood marriages between female pilots and pilots precisely in order to generate future world champions. Imagine, for example, the natural product of a Lewis Hamilton, say, and a Danika Patrick? Maybe. Meanwhile, Max stepped forward. His girlfriend is Kelly Piquet, daughter of three-time world champion Nelson. The genes squeezed out of four world titles (if it happened today: the total is destined to increase) could theoretically give birth to the most genetically gifted driver ever.
It’s a joke, of course. But these days nothing more than jokes can come true …
#Honor #father #mother #FormulaPassionit
