Verstappen's Engineer Identifies Two Pivotal Moments That Made Him F1 World Champion
F1Wednesday, 20 December 2023 at 03:00
Max Verstappen's Red Bull Racing engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, reflected on the two significant moments in Verstappen's F1 career that shaped who he is today.
Max Verstappen won the third World Championship in 2023 and proved he deserves to be compared to other greatest drivers of the sport already at the age of 26 by breaking numerous incredible records.
The Dutchman showed incredible consistency throughout the whole season without making a single mistake in any race. However, he wasn't always so flawless. His engineer Gianpiero Lambiase described the two turning points in his career. As quoted by racingnews365, he said:
"Working closely with him, there's been two stages in his development. The first one was in early 2018, where we had a fairly rough ride in the first six or seven races."
The Dutchman entered Formula One as the youngest driver ever and had pretty challenging start to one of his early seasons in Red Bull as he still lacked a lot of experience.
"We couldn't do anything but crash into something or somebody I think that year, there was a turning point where he realised he needed to change or things are going in the wrong direction."
The Dutchman used to have so many on-track incidents, that people started calling him "Crashstappen." On the other hand, the triple World Champion obviously made progress since those times to the point that we don't hear his bad nickname anymore.
"From the midseason onwards, he was in really competitive against Daniel for the rest of that year."
The Dutchman has shown incredible speed ever since his first race in Red Bull, which he won. But he also needed to learn consistency, which was the second point Lambiase described.
"The second one was a build up from 2018 and is actually starting to learn that you needed to be at the checkered flag if you actually wanted to start competing for a championship."
According to his engineer, Verstappen started showing great consistency already in 2020, but it wasn't so obvious because Red Bull was far from Mercedes, but he got the opportunity to show what he got in 2021.
"I think that penny sunk through 2020 when the car wasn't quite as competitive as it was the following year. So he couldn't mount a championship challenge per se, but he was ultra-consistent. Then in 2021, I think that ultimately is what won him the championship, his level of consistency."
Ferrari team principal recently stated he believes Verstappen will start making mistakes if somebody can put pressure on him. Do you think we might see that in 2024?
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