Meet the man with the golden boots. That is how Max Verstappen will attire himself when he steps into the cockpit for the 2022 season as the new and defending world champion.
He is in relaxed form as we meet in the Barcelona sun in a break from testing. Tucked away in the Red Bull motor home on whose terrace we speak sat a whopping £40million-a-year contract that only required his signature, since appended. No wonder he seems content.
But, for all his double-his-money riches that keep him at the team until the end of 2028, he remains very much the unassuming and unvarnished Dutchman who partied away on the Abu Dhabi harbour after his last-lap bravura controversially robbed Lewis Hamilton of an eighth world title.
Max Verstappen said he deserves to be world champion as he prepares to retain his F1 crown
He would not greatly mind you noting that in 2021 he led most laps (652 to Hamilton’s 297), won most races (10 to 8) and secured most poles (10 to five). So, as he sees it, the contentious denouement to Formula One’s longest and most gruelling, Covid-ridden season was merely a flashpoint rather than a sullying statement on his right to wear the cherished No 1 on his car.
‘I believe I deserve to be world champion,’ he declares.
Has he been in touch with Hamilton over the winter?
Verstappen won the 2021 World Championship as he pipped Lewis Hamilton in the final race
‘No. There is no reason to. We haven’t seen each other since just after the end of the race. It is fine. We are racers and we move on.’
Yes, you can understand Hamilton and Mercedes’ fury. They blame race director Michael Masi, now brutally removed from post, for his unusual call to restart the race without all the lapped cars having unlapped themselves. But the Australian was not biased. He was trying in the heat of battle to squeeze in one final lap rather than allow the championship to end under a safety car.
Credit to Red Bell for putting Verstappen on new tyres, granting him a crucial speed advantage. Credit, also, to Verstappen for expertly pouncing on the previously dominant Hamilton earlier than anyone expected.
A late safety car decisions saw him win in controversial style but he argues he deserved it
The slings and arrows of sporting fortune can be cruel.
Verstappen says: ‘A championship is won over the season, right? Not because of the last lap. Some people just look at that race because of the tension building up around it and think the outcome was wrong.
‘But if you look at the year, the title would normally have been decided way earlier. It is just that I was taken out twice and had some bad luck with tyre blowouts.
‘It came down to the last race because of all that misfortune. And look at the stats. That usually gives you a picture of how the season went.’ Does he feel sorry for Lewis? ‘I can understand with how Abu Dhabi played out that he was upset and not happy with it but, as I say, you have to look at the championship in general.
‘It was a crazy and epic season. I don’t care if people try to take the shine off it. It doesn’t matter. The losing side always will complain, but the winning side think about it differently.’
As for Masi, he still works for the governing body but not as their top official.
He will be replaced by Eduardo Freitas and Niels Wittich in a strange job-share that hardly lends itself to consistency of judgments.
‘What happened to Michael is very unfair,’ says Verstappen. ‘The FIA were pressurised (by Mercedes) into making a decision. I wrote a message to him about it.
2021 was a stellar year for him as led most laps, won most races and secured most poles
‘I said we didn’t always agree on everything but that’s racing. We always wanted to make the sport better as a whole. Nobody is perfect, but what was always brought up was that we needed to race. We needed that mindset and he had that.
‘For Michael to jump in after Charlie (Whiting, the long-term race director who died suddenly on the eve of the 2019 Australian Grand Prix) was a difficult task.
‘Everyone needs help. I have the whole team around me. Maybe Michael needed more people around him but he never got the opportunity. They really put him in the ground.
‘He appreciated my message. He got a few more. It was very fresh for him. I have had my moments with the stewards but at the end of the day you have to have respect for each other. You don’t always have to agree. The aim is to make the racing better, more exciting but also fair.’ Since the celebration bash, Verstappen enjoyed catching up quietly with his family and holidaying with girlfriend Kelly Piquet, daughter of three-time world champion Nelson.
‘That evening on the boat was crazy, but I went away later to Brazil and Miami for two and a half weeks, time not to think about Formula One.
‘But the problem was that I am involved in various group chats about simulator racing. I was trying not to think about F1 but the phone was going ping, ping, ping.’
An obsessive, he took part in Le Mans Virtual, just missed out on pole and was leading when he crashed — a ‘rookie error’, as he describes it.
He adds: ‘I don’t mind enjoying food but you look at yourself in the mirror. I gained three or four kilos, less than usual actually over the winter. But you still see the difference in your body. I had love handles. When you have been one shape your whole life growing up, it is strange and you know it is time to start again, to get into training twice a day.’
Red Bull and Mercedes are expected to be right in the mix again this year despite the biggest change to the regulations in recent times, while Ferrari also looked strong on the not entirely indicative evidence of the first test in Barcelona.
More testing follows in Bahrain ahead of the race there on March 20, the first of 23 rounds if a replacement is found for the axed Russian Grand Prix.
Does he feel liberated now he has bagged his first title at the age of 24?
‘I will always want to win,’ he says, admitting the hectic week leading into the decider in the desert still makes him shudder. ‘But the desperate “must win” is gone. It doesn’t mean I am less motivated. I have the same level of motivation, maybe more, to do it again.
‘It feels nice. It is a relaxation. There is less of a rush. I was already in my seventh season. I had never really had a shot at the title before. I had my first chance and, of course, I wanted desperately to do it. Winning a championship is one of those things that doesn’t happen often. It may never happen again, who knows?
‘Wearing the golden shoes (made for him by Puma to mark his title-winning feat) is a way of celebrating a special moment. You have to enjoy it.
‘I remember when I was watching on TV when I was go-karting as a boy and there was a podium celebration and the national anthem was playing and my dad (former F1 driver Jos) said to me, “That’s where we need to go”, and I said “I’d like that”.
‘Now I need some luck, the right car, to do it again.
‘For now, I am happy.’
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