Max Verstappen
1. Who is Max Verstappen?
Max Verstappen is a Dutch Formula 1 driver, born September 30, 1997 in Hasselt (Belgium) and who plays for the Red Bull Racing team.
Max Verstappen, F1 world champion. © DPPI
2. Max Verstappen’s junior career
Max Verstappen made his debut in a single-seater in Florida, during the 2014 Florida Winter Series, organized by Ferrari where we also found Nicholas Latifi and Lance Stroll. The Dutch driver will win two races and take three pole positions. The same year, Max Verstappen participated in the Formula 3 European Championship with the Van Amersfoort team and he finished in third position, 67 points behind Esteban Ocon, the winner of this edition.
The Dutch driver will, however, stand out by stringing together several victories and will catch the eye of the Red Bull team for which he will sign up and join the Red Bull Junior Team. A few days after his signing, and despite his lack of experience and his young age, the Toro Rosso team announced that he would register the young Dutch driver as a starter for the 2015 Formula 1 season.
Max Verstappen fought for the F3 Europe title in 2014. © Florent Gooden / DPPI
3. Max Verstappen’s Formula 1 journey
The year 2015 therefore marks the debut of Max Verstappen on the Formula 1 circuits under the colors of Toro Rosso. At the Melbourne Grand Prix, he became the youngest driver in history to start, before becoming the youngest to score points in Formula 1, finishing seventh in the Malaysian GP. He was then 17 years and 180 days old and continued to impress observers. Finally, during his first season in F1, he finished in 12th place in the drivers' standings, having finished around ten Grands Prix in the points zone.
March 15, 2015: At the Melbourne GP, Verstappen takes part in an F1 race for the first time in his career at the wheel of a Toro Rosso. Aged 17 years and 166 days, he is the youngest driver in history to line up on the starting grid. He will finish in 12th place.
For his second season in the premier event, the Dutchman will start the season with the Toro Rosso team, before being transferred during the season to Red Bull in place of Daniil Kvyat. The change took place before the Spanish Grand Prix (May 2016) when Christian Horner decided to give the young prodigy a chance. For his first time behind the wheel of a Red Bull, he won this same Grand Prix and became the youngest driver to cross the finish line of a GP as leader, at the age of 18 years and 7 months. At the end of this season, he will finish in fifth place in the standings with 204 points.
Verstappen's third season (the first complete with Red Bull Racing) is mixed because the Dutch driver will experience seven retirements for only two victories. After several encouraging results (5th in Australia and 3rd in China), he was forced to retire for the first time in his career in Bahrain, then in Canada and Azerbaijan. Verstappen will experience the two victories of this 2017 season in Malaysia (ahead of Lewis Hamilton) and in Mexico. In the end, the Hasselt native will finish in sixth place in the championship with 168 points.
Max Verstappen, the driver from the Netherlands, will continue to progress in his fourth season in Formula 1 and will meet Red Bull's expectations. During this year 2018, he will climb to the highest step of the podium twice, during the Austrian GP and in Mexico. This latest victory allows him to set the record for the number of Grands Prix won without having obtained the slightest pole position. In addition, he would finish on a podium eleven times, as many times as since the start of his F1 career. In the final standings, Max Verstappen is in fourth place (his best result since his debut in F1) with a total of 249 points scored.
Max Verstappen will experience his first two pole positions during this 2019 season, at the Hungarian Grand Prix (which he will finish second behind Hamilton) and in Brazil, a race which he will win. In addition to the Dutchman's first two poles and three victories (Germany, Brazil and Austria), Verstappen will finish the championship on the third step of the podium with a total of 278 points scored.
August 3, 2019: The Dutch driver had his first pole position during the Budapest GP.
In January 2020, before starting the 1 F2020 season which will be severely disrupted by the Covid-19 pandemic, Max Verstappen extends his contract with Red Bull until 2023. During this season which will not begin until July, Max Verstappen will win two GPs, those of Silverstone and Abu Dhabi. With a total of eleven podiums, he will finish this very special season in 3rd place in the ranking with a total of 214 points on the clock.
His moment of glory, the one he had been waiting for since his debut in Formula 1 in 2015, finally arrived on December 12, 2021. That day, while he was in a perfect tie with his rival Lewis Hamilton, Max Verstappen became champion of the Formula 1 world in Abu Dhabi, thanks to a final lap as memorable as it was controversial. While Lewis Hamilton was flying towards a clear and flawless victory, Nicholas Latifi's accident five laps from the end turned everything upside down.
After banning him, the race direction finally allowed the latecomers to overtake, and Max Verstappen then found himself in the exhausts of Lewis Hamilton, ready to pounce at the Safety Car restart. On much fresher and softer rubber, the Dutchman overtook Hamilton at turn 5 and defended perfectly at turns 6 and 9 to win his first world championship title, the first for Red Bull Racing since 2013.
Jos and Max Verstappen after the 2021 Abu Dhabi GP and the Dutchman's first title © Florent Gooden / DPPI
This first title marks the start of domination for Max Verstappen: with the new technical regulations, Red Bull becomes the leading team and dominates the championship. It takes no less for the Dutchman to have a string of successes: in 2022, he won the title with 15 victories, a record... which he will beat the following year, in 2023, where he will achieve no less than 19 victories in 22 Grand Prix! Maddening statistics for Max Verstappen, who dominates the discipline. The three-time world champion does not intend to stop there and is aiming for a fourth consecutive title in 2024, which would place him at the level of Sebastian Vettel and Alain Prost.
4. AutoHebdo's opinion on Max Verstappen
Max Verstappen has been in constant progress since the start of his F1 career. Arriving at the Toro Rosso team at a very young age, he will only have to wait one and a half seasons before joining the prestigious Red Bull team. His exceptional performances for his young age and his first victory in F1 for his first race with Red Bull caught the eye of observers and everyone agrees that he is a potential world champion.
By gaining maturity and experience, he asserts himself as a direct competitor to Lewis Hamilton and is for the first time in a position to truly challenge for the title of world champion in 2021. Taking advantage of a well-born RB16B, Max Verstappen leads an anthology fight against Lewis Hamilton in 2022 and wins the war of nerves on the night of Abu Dhabi. At 24, he won his first world champion title and it's far from being the last!
Triple reigning world champion after having dominated the 2022 and 2023 championships, Max Verstappen is writing the history of F1 and his own legend, by breaking record after record at his still young age for the discipline. So much so that we wonder if he is not tired of his domination... and if he could not abandon Formula 1 at the end of his contract with Red Bull in 2028.
Jean Todt presented the champion trophy to Max Verstappen during the FIA gala in Paris. ©DPPI/G. Hazard
Results in Formula 1
associated researches
Drivers of his generation
