The Editor: Why we should start to like Max Verstappen

Some champions are hard to like. Novak Djokovic is an astonishing athlete, but an acquired taste. Chris Froome in his pomp won the Tour de France four times but left many cold. They were, to reach for the commentators’ phrasebook, to be admired but not loved. You could have said – and many have – the same of Max Verstappen, the newly crowned four-time Formula 1 world champion, and until a few weeks ago I would have agreed with you.

There was something machine-like in his clinical composure behind the wheel, the feeling that rather than relying on the flair and fire of some of his rivals he had instead acquired his undoubted superiority via a lifetime of cold-eyed practice. And then there were the circumstances of his 2021 title…

But this year I have found myself not only admiring Max but rather liking him. First there is the mature way that he dealt with the fallout from Horner-gate, managing to tread a delicate path between his team principal and his dad. As Mark Hughes says in his analysis of Verstappen’s season in this issue, “In a challenging combination of circumstances where it would have been very easy for the whole team to have come undone, he has been the glue.”

“I have found myself not only admiring Verstappen but rather liking him”

More frivolously, but amusingly, I enjoyed the way he blew a raspberry at the FIA’s ludicrous censure of drivers’ bad language as well as his outspoken criticism of some of the sillier excesses of the F1 show. Doing community work in Rwanda as punishment is a small price to pay. Far from being robotic, Max showed that underrated human trait of saying it like it is.

On track he showed character in what was his hardest-fought season. As others have noted, he managed to win the title while driving the third-quickest car. Perhaps then, we should begin to not only admire the 2024 world champion, but start to like him too.

It is with great sadness that I report the death of Gordon Cruickshank, Motor Sport’s editor at large. Gordon was the magazine’s longest-serving journalist having started here in 1982 under the editorship of Bill Boddy. He was also a friend to many in the motor sport community and a much-loved and respected colleague.

Readers will know Gordon for his brilliant writing which combined natural authority with wry humour. Around the office we will remember him as a generous friend with bottomless reserves of stoicism, knowledge and wise counsel. We remember Gordon’s remarkable life on page 168 of this issue. All of us at Motor Sport offer our sincere condolences to his family.

Joe Dunn, editor
Follow Joe on Twitter @joedunn90

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