Incongruous as it is to equate with his still-boyish looks, at 25 years old Max Verstappen is very much the grizzled Formula One veteran. Eight years into his career the Dutchman is race-hardened but to an extent still a kid in a sweet shop. Right place, right time and a fistful of sherbet lemons in the form of the car, his Red Bull team and a natural talent.
Verstappen still bears himself with an enthusiastic, youthful demeanour, as right he might. With a second title within his grasp at Sunday’s Japanese Grand Prix, he is delivering on the promise shown at his F1 debut at Suzuka when he was 17.
Little wonder then he is smiling a lot and his features are yet unweathered by time. But this belies a driver who has put in the years and is now coming good on the potential that some recognised in the precocious teen who was still too young to qualify for a driving licence in the Netherlands when he first climbed behind the wheel of an F1 car.
When he took to the track at Suzuka in 2014 for first practice with Toro Rosso (now AlphaTauri) Verstappen was at 17 and three days old the youngest driver to take part in an F1 meeting. Doing so when faced with the mighty challenge of this classic circuit was a baptism of fire.
The rationale was a blunt test of whether the prodigy was really ready to step up to the big time.“We made a conscious decision to throw Max into the deep end,” says the Red Bull director of motorsport, Helmut Marko. “That was quite a challenge. But I believed that with him we had found someone who would become the new norm.
“At Suzuka we got confirmation of what I already knew, Max didn’t do anything wrong in that practice and was competitive from the first moment he stepped into a Formula One car.”
Doubts about his age and his ability were swept away. Verstappen set the 12th fastest time, four-tenths off Daniil Kvyat, who had been with the team all season. That was after the youngster had been told to just take it easy and put in some laps, to get used to the vast difference from an F1 car to the F3 he was driving in 2014. Remarkably he took it in his stride.
“I’m not focused on the age, it doesn’t matter to me,” he said at the time. “I don’t feel any pressure really. I’m quite relaxed, I don’t worry about it.” He would often repeat that sentiment over the next seven years right up until he saw off the intense pressure of beating Lewis Hamilton to the world championship last season.
At Suzuka today, as he prepares for what might be another career-defining race, he recalled the first time fondly. “To do your first outing in an F1 car around Suzuka is probably not normally straightforward but Red Bull wanted me to do it,” he says. “I remember how much power I had, that was a bit of a shock to the system. But overall, very good memories.”
It should be noted that Verstappen – the son of the former F1 driver Jos – had gone straight from karting to one season in F3 at 16 in 2014. His ability to adjust to the power and the braking capacity of F1 cars was a crucial telling point for those who knew the game. AlphaTauri’s principal, Franz Tost, has been in charge of the team since it was formed from Minardi as Toro Rosso in 2005.
Tost already believed Verstappen was ready for F1 after he had put in 150 flawless laps in a test at the Adria circuit in Italy. The Austrian is a careful, considered judge, not inclined to hyperbole. It was he who told Verstappen to just enjoy himself at Suzuka in 2014, don’t over push, just put in the mileage and don’t crash.
Yet he saw far more than that, a driver who had effortlessly adapted to a new challenge. “Max did not have a problem with the speed which means he was not overloaded by driving,” he says. “Young drivers coming to F1 at the beginning they are passengers, the car is driving them. Not Max, he was driving the car, he could react and he did not spin and he did not crash.
“The more skilled a driver is the faster he adapts to these challenges and with Max this was absolutely not a problem. He immediately got familiar with the car. He immediately controlled the car.”
Verstappen was set to join Toro Rosso the next year and Tost was left with no doubts. “I was looking forward to having him in 2015,” he recalls. But such was Verstappen’s talent the stay was short lived. After one season and four races, he was promoted to parent team Red Bull in 2016, taking his first win on his debut in Spain.
At that point Red Bull lacked the machinery to challenge for the title and Verstappen clearly needed to hone his craft. Over-impetuous, too aggressive and prone to errors from pushing too hard, he had at times proved exasperating even for the team who knew his potential. Yet this proved to be the vital forge, the period when, as Verstappen acknowledges now, the boy became a man and the man a champion.
“What helped the most was just experience,” he says. “Good moments, bad moments in F1, they make you a better driver. When you start in F1 it all feels very unknown. If I compare myself as a driver from now till then, it’s a very big difference.”
