“What I have witnessed with him, I have never seen before,” says Max Verstappen’s team principal, Christian Horner, expressing a quiet conviction in his driver on securing a fourth consecutive Formula One world championship.
Horner, chief executive of Red Bull Racing, believes Verstappen, who claimed the title in Las Vegas, is setting new standards and has now unequivocally taken his place in the pantheon of Formula One. After a season-long demonstration of skill, race craft, and ruthless determination to close out what has been his most challenging championship yet, Verstappen has earned the plaudits.
Horner puts Verstappen’s campaign in 2024 alongside some of the greats. “You think back to races like Ayrton Senna at Donington in 1993 or some of the Michael Schumacher drives, some of Lewis’s greatest drives, Max is firmly in that club,” he says. “This year it has been very, very taxing for him but he has kept his head. He is a complete driver now, this year has really demonstrated that he really is the complete package.”
Horner has spent his career in racing, first as driver and then as team principal. The sport has been his all since it captured him as a child. His passion for it has always been worn proudly and his pleasure in Verstappen’s achievement is palpable.
He has been very close to the 27-year-old since the driver stepped up to Red Bull after just over a season at sister team Toro Rosso whom he had joined when he was just 17. However it was a relationship tested this year more than any other. It opened under intense pressure, controversy and a spotlight on the team when Horner was accused of inappropriate behaviour by a female employee. The complaint was denied and was subsequently dismissed by an independent inquiry.
It was a far from ideal start to the season and Verstappen’s father, Jos, threw fuel on the flames by calling for Horner to be removed as team principal, putting Max in an awkward position between family and team. More was to follow as amid the turmoil, Mercedes’ Toto Wolff made no secret of his desire to lure Verstappen away from Red Bull and then the team’s genius designer of almost two decades, Adrian Newey, announced he was to leave. All this occurred within the first six races of the season, a period which Verstappen, a driver who just wants to drive and is really not interested in the ephemera, weathered with no little equanimity.
“He’s just been hugely mature, there has been a lot of noise but Max hasn’t changed a beat,” Horner says. “This has been very different to his other titles. We started strong but then he had to keep his head. There was lots of speculation about his future and he has just parked all of it and gone out there and delivered when many other drivers would have succumbed to the pressure. If anything, the relationship has grown this year because sometimes adversity brings you closer together.”
Certainly Verstappen dealt with the furore well but it was his performances on track that spoke of a driver at the very top of his game when he was under the cosh. With the Red Bull’s performance advantage all but gone and McLaren resurgent after the Miami GP, the Dutchman demonstrated a distinct resilience. He put his head down and delivered on track. But his role was vital not only behind the wheel but in working to overcome the problems the team were having and solving them, a quality that evoked Schumacher at his best.
“All of his campaigns have been impressive but this has stood out even above the exceptional results he has achieved previously,” Horner says. “Even when things were hard from Miami onwards we were winning races when perhaps we didn’t have the quickest car. Max was delivering, the team was delivering. Spain, Imola, Montreal were all very hard-fought victories.
“He kept scoring points even though we didn’t have the best car, he put in the hard work. He worked long hours with his engineers and the design team trying to understand the issues. Our tools at that point were not correlating with the track and then the driver becomes your biggest sensor for feedback. And it was here that he showed real leadership from within the cockpit for the direction that we needed to be going with the car.”
After what has been a trying year for the team, what Verstappen has delivered is recognised by Horner and with it what is clearly a very personal affection for his driver. “Absolutely I am proud of him. I’m massively proud of him and the team in a tight, tight year. He is a genuinely nice guy, doesn’t crave adulation or publicity, in fact it sits uncomfortably with him.
“He’s a racing driver, that’s what he loves doing, the rest of it is all the baggage that just goes with it.”
