The titles at Red Bull no longer have the same flavor, it can be seen in the faces of their protagonists, in the gurus who emigrate, in the bosses who have endured everything in order to provide a new championship to the stratospheric Max Verstappen (27 years old) , who seems to enjoy it the most of all. He and his father, the ineffable former F1 driver Jos Verstappen. Verstappen has won his fourth consecutive world championship in Las Vegas, with two races to go before the end of the season, a sequence that becomes a hallmark of the race every five years. Formula 1. The best car wins the titles and the best of the two drivers in the garage wins over the teammate. It happened with Vettel and Webber in the previous stage of Red Bull, with Hamilton and Rosberg/Bottas in the hybrid journey of Mercedes, and now in version 3.0 of Red Bull with Verstappen on ‘Checo’ Pérez.Verstappen catches up to Alain Prost and Sebastian Vette l, four titles, and is one behind the Argentine Juan Manuel Fangio, the first great hero of Formula 1. Only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher (7) remain higher up. 2024 has been the roller of other courses, McLaren’s papaya car has risen to the pedestal of pole positions and victories since the summer, but in a new confirmation that the driver matters a lot in F1, no McLaren driver has done so shadow to Verstappen. Lando Norris has not shown enough level to dethrone Verstappen as champion, who can be insufferable and arrogant in his behavior on the track, but he is indisputable as a driver, the current number one. Verstappen’s insatiable personality on the circuits comes from most certainly from the martial education he received from his father, Jos Verstappen, a lackluster driver in the history of F1 who shared a team with Michael Schumacher at Benetton under the orders of Flavio Briatore. There the Dutchman’s father learned the non-negotiable maxim of F1: the first rival, the driver you have to beat, is always your teammate. Jos Verstappen lost many times against Michael Schumacher, one of the greatest talents in history, greedy champion and lacking scruples to go over any adversary. «Flavio Briatore had a strong bond with Michael Schumacher, both sporting and personal. I think Jos Verstappen instilled in Max from a very young age that the first thing he has to do is destroy his teammates and create those bonds. We have seen that in recent years,” explained Graham Watson, former director of Toro Rosso (a subsidiary of Red Bull), in a statement. Dad Verstappen subjected little Max to absolute pressure since he was a child. Pierre Gasly, Alpine driver, remembers it in a World Cup kart test. «I won a race in Spain and Max finished second behind me. His father lost his temper, yelling at him in Dutch, and then insulted him in English with words that were not pleasant. He grabbed the helmet and threw it at him saying, ‘go away, go back to the tent, you can’t even win one of your races!’ The pressure was obvious, a very strong pressure, race after race. Fathers in F1 are like the mothers of folklores in the world of song. Even today, with four world championship titles, Jos continues to spur his son’s ambition. “If I do that, my father grabs me by the balls,” Max Verstappen has said more than once regarding certain mistakes or mistakes that he could make. The other form of pressure from dad Verstappen has been this year through the media. in his eagerness to try to put an end to the Red Bull leadership of Chris Horner, the longest-serving team manager in Formula 1, two decades at the helm of the red bull team. The course began with a strong discussion between Horner and Jos in the inaugural race in Bahrain. It continued with the episode of Chris Horner’s alleged harassment of a Red Bull employee that almost caused his departure from the team management. He did not rest with the continuous fights between the pilot’s father and the team’s boss. “It is bad for the team that Horner stays in charge,” JosVerstappen said during the summer. The division between the Verstappen clan and the Red Bull management affected the foundations of the team. Adrian Newey, the designer who designed the cars that made Verstappen and Vettel champions before, leaves the Austrian team and goes to Aston Martin. The departure of Adrian Newey raises a question to ask if the Red Bull cars will have a profile as brilliant and winning in the future as in the last five years or, on the contrary, they will dissolve into the mediocrity of a sport that depends on the subject. first, the car. After all, the internal fights in Red Bull and the sporting impulse of McLaren, the goodbye of the creator Newey, the boredom of the F1 fans who demand more equality, Verstappen is once again champion. Four in a row. Undeniable, tough as granite to overcome everything, not allowing external influence and behaving like a perfect robot on the track. No mistakes, no doubts. With the essence and personality that distinguishes champions.
#Max #Verstappen #par #Prost
