Max Verstappen hype machine discussed after being ‘rushed’ in to F1

Thomas Maher 03 Oct 2023 9:00 PM

Max Verstappen, pictured in 2014 as a race winner in F3.

Max Verstappen’s meteoric rise through the junior ranks is a well-known story at this point, but it came as something of a surprise to some observers…

Verstappen made his F1 debut at the wheel of a Toro Rosso in practice for the 2014 Japanese Grand Prix, before signing as a full-time racer with the Red Bull junior team for 2015 while still being a reasonably unproven driver in the junior categories.

Verstappen had only just joined the world of single-seater racing that same year, racing to third place overall in the F3 European Championship, as well as winning the Zandvoort Masters. Having gone from karting to F1 in a staggeringly short period of time, it was a rise that can’t be replicated, as the FIA introduced minimum age and licence standards as a result.

Max Verstappen didn’t have a ‘lot of chatter’ about him

Racing driver coach Matthew Howson, an LMP2 Le Mans winner and mentor to the likes of Jack Aitken and Lando Norris, said that he had heard of Verstappen coming through the ranks of karting, but it was actually Nyck de Vries who had more hype about him at that time.

“When I was at Fortec, Max tested with Fortec in Formula Renault at Silverstone,” Howson told theOn Track GP podcast.

“Silverstone was a great place for winter testing and whenever drivers arrived, you look into your database of drivers and it’s like ‘OK, we’re going to show you some onboard video, who would you like? Verstappen? Norris? [Charles] Leclerc, [George] Russell?’ We had them all.

“Max was a guy that I first really heard about when he was karting. Everyone said, ‘Oh, he’s coming, he’s going to be amazing’. But people said that very early on about Nyck de Vries and he didn’t really make a big splash when he arrived in cars, it took him quite a long time.

“So Max arrived and went straight into Formula 3, which was unheard of at that time, and then, all of a sudden, he’s in Formula 1. To be quite honest, I hadn’t really heard too much about him – certainly not negative or positive, just indifferent.

“I’d heard all sorts of things about the way his dad was going about pushing him, but there wasn’t really a lot of chatter about him. Then, all of a sudden, he’s in Formula 1. That was the thing that surprised me.”

Howson’s Le Mans teammate Richard Bradley, a regular contributor to the podcast, agreed that the hype surrounding Verstappen wasn’t all that pervasive.

“I remember it being strange because you looked at him when he went into Formula 3,” he said.

“He went with Van Amersfoort as well, which was not one of the regular front-running teams in Formula 3 at that time.

“There was hype around him, but there was as much hype around De Vries when he was in karting, if not more, to be honest, because some of Nyck’s karting results were incredible. But it was strange to see someone jump straight into a Formula 3 car, that’s unheard of in that era.”

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With Verstappen earning Red Bull’s approval to be fast-tracked straight from a solitary year in F3 into a Formula 1 cockpit, Howson said he felt Verstappen had been rushed too quickly into F1 and, as a result, had to do a lot of his learning while in the big leagues.

“Prior to [Max], Kimi Raikkonen had done one year in Formula Renault, and gone straight in Formula 1,” he said.

“I’d say Max was rushed into F1 really, and had to do a lot of his development in the eyes of everyone, as we all saw because he was quite crash-happy.

“In fact, the only time I did see him in action in F3 was at Pau, when he had an almighty crash in front of me!

“Maybe in karting circles, there was a lot of hype about him but it was more the fact that he was rushed into F1. You’re sort of thinking, ‘OK, [Red Bull have] obviously seen something’.

“It’s not something that’s pure hype, they obviously really believed in him. And you could be forgiven for thinking, after one or two years, that maybe it was a bit misplaced because he was still making strange errors.

“He was going for gaps that weren’t there, just ruthlessly… you couldn’t overtake him, which you still can’t now. You crashed, he just wouldn’t give an inch. But he’s just polished that, he’s just done it in F1.

“Whereas I think the likes of Lewis, Leclerc, and Russell, did their polishing in the junior formulae, which is the more cost-effective way!”