Dutch driver Max Verstappen (Red Bull) won the Formula 1 Japanese Grand Prix this Sunday and won his second world title through a penalty imposed by Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) after the race.
In a race that was cut to less than an hour, due to the rain that fell on Suzuka, Verstappen managed to complete 28 out of 53 laps before the time limit for completing the race (three hours) expired.
The Dutchman finished the Japanese GP with 26.763 seconds ahead of Leclerc and 27,066 ahead of Mexican Sérgio Pérez (Red Bull), who was promoted to second in a trade with the Monegask after the Ferrari driver was penalized five seconds for cutting off the job. penultimate corner of the race, when he defended against Pérez.
With this 12th win of the season in 18 races, Verstappen achieves 366 points, 114 more than Pérez, while there are 112 points in the four races still to be run.
Records in the crosshairs of Mad Max
Max Verstappen showed on Sunday that he is heading for the gallery of Formula 1 heroes by confirming his second consecutive world title, in a season more ‘Max’ than ‘Mad’.
With 12 wins in 18 races already played this year, the Red Bull driver, known as ‘Mad Max’, in a reference to actor Mel Gibson’s character in the movie of the same name, proved more mature and sporty dominant than in 2021, the year in which he won the title with ‘iron’, in an intense duel with Briton Lewis Hamilton (Mercedes) until the last race of the season.
Known for his untimely nature on the track, Verstappen has already been dubbed by former Formula 1 boss Bernie Ecclestone as “the best thing that has happened to the sport in recent years”.
The Dutchman was already the youngest ever in the premier class of motorsport, even before he was old enough to have a driver’s license.
The son of former driver Jos Verstappen, Max became one of the earliest Formula 1 champions this Sunday, bringing Monegasque Charles Leclerc (Ferrari) to second place in the World Cup.
With this performance, the Dutchman equaled Briton Nigel Mansell, just behind Germany’s Michael Schumacher, who secured the title in 2002 with six races to go.
From an early age, young Max entered the racing world, primarily because his father was the most successful driver in the Netherlands until then.
Being a Formula 1 driver was “a childhood dream”, he admitted at the start of his career.
But his mother also successfully drove karts, a modality in which the now champion started at the age of four.
In fact, at the age of 15, he would become world karting champion, proving that the strict education he received at home made him an elite driver.
The difficult relationship with his father is one of the paddock’s most hidden secrets, and in 2019, on the sidelines of the Russian GP, Max recalled an episode in which his father abandoned him at a petrol station in Italy. got lost in a race “which I should have easily won”, and the two stayed the following week without saying a word.
Precisely because of this family pressure, Max Verstappen found “no surprises in Formula 1”, because there was “no one harder” for him than his own father.
Jos Verstappen led his son’s career with an iron fist, leading young Max to Formula 1 via Red Bull’s satellite team Toro Rosso in 2015, starting a path that broke several early records in the sport.
At 17 years and 166 days, he became the youngest ever to participate full-time in the ‘Grand Circus’ at the Australian Grand Prix that year.
Two races later, in Malaysia, he was the youngest ever to score, aged 17 years and 180 days, as he finished seventh.
In 2016, as the season got underway, the ultra-confident and sometimes controversial driver, who defines himself as a Dutchman despite his birth in Belgium, was promoted to Red Bull’s first team in Hasselt, replacing Russian Daniil Kvyat. And in his debut race for the team, he won the Spanish GP, aged 18 years and 228 days.
Max Verstappen’s success in Formula 1 was built on several incidents, many caused by on-track turbulence – accompanied by ‘raw’ honesty off-road – a phenomenon that has been much more controlled this year, resulting in the dominance of the season, in which he already took 12 wins in the 18 rounds played and with no notable mistakes.
After two third places in the championship, in 2019 and 2020, Verstappen, who turned 25 on Friday, won the second title of his career after the controversial win in 2021, in the final race of the season, in Abu Dhabi, against Lewis Hamilton. .
The Dutchman, who became the 34th different champion in 2021 and the fourth youngest, behind German Sebastian Vettel, Lewis Hamilton himself and Spaniard Fernando Alonso, is now chasing other records in the sport.
Owning a strong personality and not very expansive off the track, he has transformed in the car, having played several incidents with other drivers during his career.
“I enter the track and change the key from calm to aggressive,” he admitted in an interview with Brazilian newspaper GloboEsporte in 2016.
In 2021, ahead of the Portuguese Grand Prix, Mexican Sérgio Pérez, his teammate at Red Bull, confessed that he was “surprised” by the Dutchman’s personality.
“The image Max has is different from who he is as a person. Of course he wants to be very fast, he is very competitive, but everything you see in the media I haven’t seen yet. To be honest I’m pretty impressed by this aspect,” confessed the Mexican.
But Formula 1 is also present in the life of the 25-year-old driver off the track, since the beginning of January 2020 he has confirmed his relationship with Brazilian model Kelly Piquet, daughter of former driver and Brazilian Formula 1 world champion Nélson. Picket. .
Afraid of the spotlight of fame, he refused to participate in the documentary ‘Drive to Survive’ on the Netflix platform, because he did not like the way he was portrayed in the first seasons and was nervous about the constant presence of the cameras. during the Grand Prix weekends.
“Normally I’m not one to like having cameras around,” he admits.
However, at the end of 2020, he was due to release his own documentary, ‘Whatever It Takes’, featuring his take on the championship.
At 25, Max Verstappen is on his way to joining the biggest names in Formula 1.
Source: DN
