How he does it, more than his overflowing successes: therein lies the great premise. It would be impossible to describe everything that this specimen can bring together in perhaps the greatest symbiosis seen in at least three decades in Formula One. Yes, that very one: “Mad” Max Verstappen, a bizarre from unsuspected confines.
Sunday’s victory in the Hungarian GP (forty-fourth for life), in which he beat his arch-rival from the start, Lewis Hamilton, who started with a historic pole position, not only confirms Verstappen as a dictator’s pigeon, but also simulates it a genuine monster.
That victory outlines him for sure a three-time champion, unless Armageddon happens; incidentally he would break his own marks (15 victories) and points, imposed in 2022 (454, he has 281), still remaining eleven GP’s (average 24.3 p/c, without sprints Azerbaijan and Austria).
Verstappen broke the historical mark for Hamilton himself, who in the 2019 World Cup had a sum of 413, which catapults him into a “recordman”.
Mad Max, the name that best identifies the monarch, has not ceased to captivate experts and unknown alike, as a record man since his lead-footed arrival on the largest asphalt snake.
After the first eleven Grand Prix’s of 2023, the Dutchman seems to be drawing “Pizarro’s line”: commanding the highest category of world motorsport as long as the middle of his years allows him to, a period so long as to break all records.
Because Verstappen, who had the rules changed before his early arrival and the only one to win a race at the age of 18, begins to put other codes on the so-called Great Circus.
And Hamilton, a tyrant whom he beheaded with probably the most dramatic career and World Cup in history, in 2021, should “put his beard in the water” as a leader in many areas, including his 103 victories. Verstappen has 34 wins since 2021 (13.6 per year)!
A monster…
A “seven-headed monster”? Well, this man, with a very synoptic career with the best drivers of all time -a list that does not reach five-, has the ability to do everything well… even kill without mercy, a great virtue of the historical ones.
Verstappen wears a bar that terrifies each rival par excellence; even what has caused the very promising to the title, look “resigned” to seconds for years. And more: he kills hand in hand, but the same when he is a close pursuer of the one who surpasses him in a race.
When Verstappen beheaded Hamilton at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix (2021), ripping him off, to the astonishment of the world, what a career and title (fifth in a row) looked like for the Englishman, he pointed out that it would not be a solitary scepter.
Mad Max won against all odds: Hamilton had the best car (Mercedes was looking for the ninth title in line) and was still the favorite to win the drivers’ title, in contrast to a Red Bull still looking to exploit its development (power and reliability).
In the Hungarian event, which Hamilton made his own (eight victories), Verstappen performed another of his monstrous maneuvers, for the umpteenth time in his career that he has done so without even noticing his rivals in the rear-view mirrors.
Verstappen has won his races (9) overwhelmingly or easily, warning that his regime already represents a danger to the competitive line… for years!, because it looks infallible.