Verstappen showed three sides to his personality in three races

The triple-header across the Americas was an intense period for the Formula 1 circus. So much seemed to happen both on and off the track that on reflection it’s actually hard to try and remember it all. To be honest, that’s generally a symptom of having so many races these days – the seasons all start to blend into one! What we did see across the three races was the many sides to Max Verstappen. By the time you read this he would have probably clinched his fourth world championship. At just 27 years old, the targets set by Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton are surely in his sights.

It’s probably fair to say that since Miami, Red Bull has not had the fastest car on the grid and in fact on some weekends it seemed like it only had the third or fourth-fastest car. Yet if you look at the points table heading into Miami, Max led Lando Norris by 52 points and as we head into the final three, that gap is up to 62 points. In that same period, Max has scored 283 points versus 66 for his team-mate Sergio Pérez. Whatever Pérez’s issues may be, his record suggests that he’s a very solid grand prix driver, with podiums and wins to his name, so the fact he’s scored just about a quarter of Max’s points underlines why the Dutchman would be a deserving winner of the 2024 World Drivers’ Championship.

“The targets set by Schumacher and Hamilton are surely in Max’s sights”

This brings me back to the Austin, Mexico and Brazil triple-header where we got to see all the different sides of the multifaceted Max Verstappen. At the start in Austin, he went for a small gap that Lando left and really not many other drivers would have been so robust in charging into that gap, knowing full well that they’re probably going to go wide off track and force their rival off with them. But Max isn’t any driver and Lando should have known that. He is ruthlessly uncompromising like Schumacher was. He would never have hesitated to make a move, knowing that on lap one the stewards will let you get away with more than at any other point in the race. The Red Bull clearly was struggling for pace, yet later in the race we saw a defensive masterclass from Verstappen who placed the car in all the right places, slowed down when he needed to and charged away using his battery wisely in other places.

When Lando tried to pass him around the outside into turn 12, Max knew the guidelines used by the stewards said that he had to be in front at the apex – it doesn’t say anything about staying on track or forcing his rival off. So he did all three of those things and Lando got the penalty for passing off track.

Therein lay the difference – one driver knew the rules and pushed the boundaries to the edge, the other broke a rule and chose not to correct it on track. I’m not saying that it’s fair or clean racing (in fact, I believe the guidelines need to be amended), but the rules currently are what they are and Max knows them.

In Mexico, Lando had learnt his lesson, got himself fully alongside into turn four at the apex and earned the place. That unleashed the ‘angry Max’ that we’ve seen in the past. The dive-bomb into turn eight was a moment of complete road rage – he was never going to make that corner at that speed and line but was going to do everything he could to get in front of Lando and compromise his race.

In so many ways, it felt like Verstappen’s an older sibling to Lando, who loves and gets along with his younger brother but bullies him on the playground!

There was so much talk around the driving guidelines and Max’s own approach as we got to Interlagos. Was his legacy going to be tainted by his tactics? Lewis was quick to flag 2021, George Russell said that the other 19 drivers disagreed with what Max felt was acceptable. By the end of a very long and damp Sunday, however, nobody even mentioned it as we got another display of a brilliant talent recording one of the greatest wet weather drives in F1 history.

The great drivers stand out in the wet and while most others seemed to struggle under braking, couldn’t overtake or ended up in the barriers, the Dutchman ran rings around them having started way down in 17th on the grid. He could have won the race by a second but given the fact that it was the first time he was going to win since June, he was keen to stamp his authority on the opposition. A win by 19sec, with nine of the 10 best fastest laps certainly did that. The memory of the Mexican road rage seemed to be washed away.