Verstappen Reveals Shocking Health Problems Arising From 2021 Silverstone Crash

Friday, 12 July 2024 at 09:38

Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen spoke out for the first time about problems he has been struggling with since the 2021 British Grand Prix crash.

The 2021 race at Silverstone is one that Max Verstappen and all his fans will remember forever. On that day, the triple World Champion came perhaps the closest he has ever come to death after a high-speed collision with Lewis Hamilton.

Modern F1 cars are safer than ever, and the Dutchman fortunately survived. However, his body had to withstand a force of 51G at the impact, and that took its toll, as Verstappen revealed in his latest interview.

In an interview for Red Bull's website, describing the ten best races of his career, the 26-year-old revealed something he hadn't publicly discussed.

"Since my Silverstone crash, I've been struggling with visibility problems, especially on undulating courses or those with lots of advertising boards along the side of the track. In this race [2021 United States Grand Prix], I wasn't just battling against Lewis, but also against blurry images."

In the 2021 race around the Circuit of the Americas, Verstappen started from pole but lost his position to Hamilton going into the first corner.

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He then had to fight hard to make up for it. He managed to undercut the seven-time World Champion on the first pit stop, and since that point, it has been a super challenging defensive race for the Red Bull driver.

Hamilton got super close to Verstappen in the final laps of the race, but he just managed to stay out of the Mercedes driver's DRS range and brought home a very valuable victory, without which he might not have been the World Champion that year.

Verstappen explained he valued this victory very much due to the struggles he had to fight through that almost no one else knew about. He said:

"It was like driving a speedboat at 300 km/h! I've never told you this before, but for a few laps it was so bad that I seriously considered turning the car off."

"The only thing that helped was concentrating on my breathing while Lewis was breathing down my neck. An important victory that I desperately needed in the fight for the World Championship."