UPDATE: Here's a look at our published story from November, 2014. Max Verstappen has turned into a superstar after his incredible win in Spain. The 19-year-old is the youngest driver to ever win a Formula One Grand Prix. Here's a look back on a converation with Max and his father before his F1 career began. The story still has plenty of chapters yet to be written. The question is one Max Verstappen became very well-practiced at answering during Belgian Grand Prix weekend in August. Following the shocking revelation that he will make his Formula One debut next season for Scuderia Toro Rosso at the age of 17, how could a driver so young and in only his first season of car racing possibly be ready? Even if he has excelled in the hugely competitive Formula Three European Championship? “Age is just a number,” he says. “It’s on the track where you have to show what you can do. But I always made big steps—from karting to F3 was a big step, but it was a different environment because my dad was also an F1 driver. I’m ready for it.” Mention of Max’s father, Jos, is a warning that the Verstappens have been here before. Twenty years ago, Jos was a 22-year-old with a huge reputation whose stunning F1 test for Footwork landed him on the cover of U.K. racing bible Autosport before he had come close to starting a Grand Prix. But after being drafted to race for Benetton in place of the injured J.J. Lehto at the start of the 1994 season, things never quite came together.
Verstappen streaks by on his way to the first victory of his career.
After a couple podiums in that stop/start first season, his career—a few extraordinary performances aside (notably hauling the unimpressive Simtek as high as sixth in the 1995 Argentinian Grand Prix before retiring)—reads like that of a journeyman. He should have achieved more, meaning Jos doesn’t just know how difficult it is to translate ability into results, he has lived it.
“I had the bad luck that I was next to Michael Schumacher when I started in F1; I should have started in a lower team,” says Jos. “I came into F1 after two years in which I did about 50 races. Max will have done around 45, but he has done a lot more in a go-kart. He is better prepared, and the world has changed.
“In all kinds of sports, people are younger. In F1, the cars are completely different to the ones in my time, and the tracks are different. When I made a mistake at a chicane, I was in a gravel trap; now when you brake too late, there is asphalt you can use and drive back on the circuit.
“I made too many mistakes and I was compared to the best driver in the whole world. But with Max, we have a longer deal, not just a one-year contract. So Max will get the time, and Red Bull will prepare Max a lot better. He can handle it.”
After climbing out of his car, Verstappen celebrates being the youngest driver to ever win a Formula 1 race.
The elder Verstappen has been nurturing his son’s talent for a long time, even forsaking his own racing career to focus on it. Max started learning in a kart at the age of just 4. Initially, it was just a fun way for a father and son to pass the time, but it soon became clear to Jos that his son had some serious talent.
Given that Max doesn’t just have racing DNA on the paternal side—his mother is Sophie Kumpen, who had a very successful karting career—it is perhaps no surprise that he had raw ability in abundance.
Speaking with Jos at length about his son’s development, though, it becomes clear that nurture has played more of a part than nature.
“It’s natural talent, and it’s education,” he says. “The way he overtakes is natural talent, but there are things you have to do to understand that talent. You have to teach them, analyze overtaking, watch F1. He is always watching what to do and how to overtake.
After the collision between Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg in Barcelona, Verstappen wasted no time taking advantage of the opportunity.
“I’ll give you an example. He was winning a lot when he was young. At the time, we had standing starts, and people would put a bit of oil on the clutch to have a better start. I didn’t do that. I liked him to come out of the first corner in fourth because I wanted him to race. He always overtook easily, and although people were saying his engine was stronger, I think it was due to keeping speed up in the corner.
“At times I told him, ‘You’re not allowed to overtake on a straight’ and that you can’t overtake there or there. I wanted him to overtake in different places to make it hard for him.”
Gut reaction says this seems apocryphal, more about mythmaking than the truth. But look at Max’s career to date, and it rings true. In winning the CIK-FIA World KZ Championship kart title last year, Max had to battle his way up from third, while in F3 this season he has made a habit of overtaking in unexpected places.
The quality of his education has shone through in every facet of his F3 campaign against vastly more experienced opposition, to the point that many of his rivals regard him as the most intelligent in the field.
The 19-year-old receives instruction prior to going out and winning the Spanish Grand Prix.
When Red Bull Junior Team boss Helmut Marko originally raised the idea of a jump straight into F1, Jos claims to have been skeptical. But the more he thought about it, the more sense it made. Max is a driver who has been pushed and challenged consistently during his career; just winning was never enough. And while Jos at times has been a hard taskmaster, the fact Max has come through it so well to date suggests he is made of the kind of steel that won’t buckle under F1’s pressure.
“Working with him for so long, I have seen him do incredible things,” says Jos. “His ability is very high, and I really think he can do it, but it’s difficult to say as a father because every father admires their son. But we have something really special, and I helped him, helped to create him, to push him and to be in the right equipment.”
The question is perhaps not whether a 17-year-old can race in F1. The question is whether this 17-year-old can. Verstappen is certainly an exceptional prospect and possibly one of those rare, once-in-a-generation talents.
