Verstappen targets Schumacher’s championships record

F1 Fanatic Round-up

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In the round-up: Max Verstappen says he aims to reach Michael Schumacher’s record of seven world championship titles.

Comment of the day

This seems to have been one of the trickier Caption Competitions we’ve had so far, and many felt the first effort submitted by Ricardo was the best:

Hey Hulk, how many podiums do you have so far?
Ricardo Aguilar (@drrapg)

Thanks to everyone who joined in and special mentions go to @nemo87, Mark and Alex Brown (@Splittimes) who also made great suggestions.

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On this day in F1

It’s four years since the FIA revived the rule allowed lapped cars to regain a lap during Safety Car periods. Has it been a change for the better?

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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 - when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring...

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96 comments on “Verstappen targets Schumacher’s championships record”

  1. 5 years on, hopefully Verstappen will look back and think “what a stupid thing to say. I really was young back then.” Unfortunately his trashy father must massage his son’s ego a bit too much… Verstappen is good, but he has a long way to go in terms of maturity- success might have been brought too soon in his case. That’s why children don’t belong in F1 (he’s not a child anymore, obviously but he was 17 when he started at Melbourne last year).

    1. …and still we have some 30-years old guy constantly talking about aiming and equaling some other champion’s records…

      1. @hoshino And both are cringeworthy…

        1. Why should a Formula One driver aim for anything less than being the best of all time? Isn’t that the point of being a professional sportsperson?

          1. Aim, certainly. (The better aim would be to be the best a driver can be, but Max is nowhere near far enough into his career to know what that’s going to look like in terms of results, and until then…)

            There are ways of expressing that which are better and ways which are worse. I will say that Max has picked one of the better ways of expressing his ambition – this is not as in-yer-face as the ways that sound cringeworthy – but I think his previous reputation is working against him by this point. Not just that he is known to be brash, but that he is known for skipping steps on the way to success. And the higher the level one reaches, the riskier a strategy that is.

          2. Jelle van der Meer
            7th December 2015, 9:35

            @keithcollantine

            Why start the interview at 05:10, why put such a headline on the article => it sets up the reactions you now see. The headline is not false but he also did not exactly say it that way.

            When you watch the entire interview you get a very much different picture. I find this exactly the problem with media today – twisting words/statements to make them more extreme/controversial than they really are.

          3. That rests on the assumption that I always know how people are going to react to things. Sometimes I do – if there’s a story about a new F1 track being designed by Hermann Tilke then I can guess there are going to be a few complaints. But not always, and not this time.

            And I don’t see how you can accuse me of “twisting” anything when all I’ve done is presented his words for you to hear as he spoke them (hence why the video starts when it does).

          4. If it is a given that drivers, and other people in sports, aim to be the best – which I agree with, why bother showing up otherwise – then it seems a bit odd to present it as somehow specific to Verstappen. Is there a single driver on the grid who doesn’t want to best Schumacher’s all conquering statistics? I doubt it.

            Whether or not Verstappen ever wins a race, let alone a championship, will become apparent in due time. I suggest we revisit the ‘equal Schumacher’ topic when someone, Verstappen or otherwise, actually manages to win six championships and has a good shot at that legendary seventh title. Until then it seems to devalue the enormity of Schumacher’s accomplishment. Verstappen isn’t even in the same league at the moment.

    2. Schumacher is the most successful and in my opinion the best driver ever and max after one season thinks he can equal him absolute nonsense Michael was the g.o.a.t

      1. There is a difference between belief and aspiration.

      2. Did you watch the interview or just let the click bate headline goad you?

        His response was to being asked what his ultimate dream goal would be, not what he’s expecting to achieve.

        1. I guess its easy to take that statement seriously because it’s coming out of an 18-year old’s mouth, and its easy to criticize Verstappen for being young. I think he really believes he will achieve that. And that is the point I am trying to make- The point I am trying to make is that Verstappen is too young to be in F1. F1 not only requires skill, but maturity to be successful. No 18-year old should be brought into such a serious business that early- he’s too young. No 18-year old could ever fathom the realities of such a serious business- that would lead to him being psychologically demoralized. In F1, you are being thrown into a shark tank- and if you can’t prove you can swim and defend yourself from sharks, then you will cease to exist. Winning 7 championships is no mean feat- that was achieved by a very special someone who is one of the greatest F1 drivers ever- and that was an achievement nobody at the time could ever have concieved anyone beating even Fangio’s record in 2003. Toro Rosso might ditch Verstappen next year or the year after for being destroyed by a better driver who might be a little older- and then what? 19 or 20 and he’s already an F1 veteran?. That is really unfair. Imagine him at 24 or 25- that’s when Verstappen would have been a far better driver than he already is now. Unless he stays with Toro Rosso for the next few seasons- that is if he is a consistently good performer and gets a drive with a top team or gets moved up to Red Bull. But I honestly believe that is what he wants to do. But the worst part is that Verstappen doesn’t seem that smart- but IMO, neither is Lewis Hamilton. He is the only multiple world champion in history whom I would not consider to be smart. In this day and age, you can afford to be just fast- because the cars are so strong and reliable and there is so much information that engineers take care of for the drivers.

          1. I think you’ve started from the general age thing and worked to the specific person, ignoring the evidence that Max is extraordinary, which is the whole point of the sport. F1 is just normal life for Max, it’s not a big deal.

            You’ve done the same thing with Hamilton, who for example keeps a very detailed notebook of all the tracks and setups, and is most often the one to take advantage when there’s a change that demands more thought from the drivers, like radio or start procedure. Your view is all assumption and supposition, with not enough observation.

            Max was asked how many championships did he aspire to. He quite obviously has the chance to be in a top car by 20, so there’s nothing unrealistic about that aim. He has no reason to think small, and just because he’s 18 doesn’t mean therefore there’s something immature about what he said. Why would he only AIM for 6 titles?

          2. @mfreire Bizarre comment imho. The fact is he has already put in a season and won 3 prizes from it, and judging by his interview he is older than his age in terms of maturity and perspective. So to call him too young now is shutting the barn door after the horses have left. He’s in F1 and already making impressions. I might have understood your comment a year ago, and even then I would have said let’s wait and see. I think we’re seeing a rising star.

            I’ll also add that I don’t think the key people who were involved in getting MV into F1 at such an early age thought the age itself was the issue…not for Max, when you look at where he is at in terms of skills and attitude, from which he had the lucky advantage of a F1 dad. I think the only reason they have changed the age requirement post-Max is not because they were worried about him, or they don’t think another special 17 year old wouldn’t be capable, but it is as much about the image of F1 that they don’t want people to think just any 17year old can drive these cars. Max is not just any 17 (now 18) year old. If he was there is no way he would have entered F1 when he did, if at all, Jos being his Dad or not.

      3. Max after one season thinks he can equal him

        He didn’t say that, he said he wants to equal him.

      4. Like you say, Schumacher was the best “in your opinion” don’t forget he had a mechanical advantages in many of his championship wins, and in his championship losses we saw how great he was not. Let the kid aspire to win 7 WDC. and Hamilton has showed, you just need car when you are good “enough”

    3. Come on man. What’s the point of being a F1 driver if you don’t aim for best… I don’t see any real ego reflecting in the interview. We need to give verstappen some break.

      1. I agree, nothing wrong with being ambitious I say.

      2. @terryhangover I read Taki Inoue wanted to be in F1 for the sake of being in F1, so there’s that…..

        1. what do you mean? at least he got to the level of being in f1.

    4. Can we count with Mrfreire to retrieve his comments when the records come tumbling down.

  2. This guy….

  3. A F1 driver being arrogant and dreaming big?

    He’s clearly too young.

    1. God forbid that a race car driver wants to win and dreams of being the best, right? An 18 year old dreams of breaking records but realizes that it’s much easier said than done – fire him now, and fire everybody that brought him into sports.

      At this rate, if you’re under 25, you don’t belong in sports. You aren’t mature enough.

  4. While I dont find myself being automatically drawn to Verstappen, I can see why he is held in such high regard. Some may say that his audacious comment about beating Schumacher’s target is just populist media talk, but hey, a guy can dream right? Records are set to be broken. Max has his who career in front of him, who’s to say that he cant break Michael’s record?

    One thing we have to remember is that Max is not your average 17 year old driver with aspirations of racing in F1. Well for starters, he’s already in F1 and has had a brilliant rookie season. Secondly, it appears that Joos has been grooming him since young to become a champion, not just a racer, but a champion. For a 17 year old, his focus is commendable, and it will only be a matter of time before he wins his first race (ok 2017 at the earliest).

    1. Hearty laugh at COTD

    2. and he can have as much as 20 seasons of F1 ahead of him, He remindsme in some way to Messi: he can beat any records on football because he’s brilliant and started very young (at 16) so he can have some good five years in him still, and score more goals and win more championships than anyone before. Just as Max can. What if he jumps to a quite good Ferrari in 2017 and gives Verstappen a run for his money? and what if he beat him, as Senna did with Prost? he can win as much as 7 and i think he have enough time to win some more.

      1. @matiascasali How can Max give Verstappen a run for his money

        1. ok, it was Vettel, no max :D

  5. Falling ratings ? The delivery method is irrelevant if the product is crap (as Bernie said using a word I can’t), which the product is at the moment. The whole allure of motorsport depends on one of 2 scenarios and ideally involves both scenarios :

    Scenario 1 : Man and machine versus the laws of physics, in which a machine is pushed to the edge of control in order to complete a course in the fastest possible time always in danger of losing control and therefore losing much time and even possibly failing to finish.
    Examples; W Rally Championship, where the cars are separated on track but always close to a spectacular crash in order to save hundredths of a second over the competion.
    Or; MotoGP, even when the leader is several seconds ahead, knees and elbows are scraping the ground with 60 degree lean angles and disaster is only a hundredth of a second away.

    Scenario 2 : Man and machine versus man and machine, in which the position of one is constantly being challenged by the other even if no pass is made there is the constant danger of an error losing 1 or both of them time and position .
    Examples: MotoGP (again), most 1-design series where the race begins at the drop of a flag and continues until the drop of a flag.

    F1 currently fits neither of these scenarios, F1 is now a tyre-management contest, drivers and their teams calculate the fastest speed they believe can be achieved while avoiding exceeding 95% of the tyres grip limit, then plot tactics they hope will allow them to circulate at the optimum speed without getting involved or even close to other cars, positions are to be gained by carefully timed and executed pit-stops or occasionally by actually passing a car whose team has miscalculated their tyre-wear and left the driver out in a car crippled by gripless worn out tyres.
    While this is no doubt a fascinating exercise for a geek and his/her computer it is totally lacking in visual excitement, and visual excitement is why people watch motorsport.

    1. Your part about F1 is something I have been saying for years since Pirelli came in ( I gave them 1 year before I decided).
      F1 is now just a time trial, where others cars become an inconvenience and a moving pylon, where drivers have to ask weather to attack or defend.

      1. Not really fair to put this in Pirellis shoes. They came in the moment refueling was banned and Fia needed another way to incentivies pitstop strategies. So they mandated that the tyres should have a life of x amount of laps. So if you want a scapegoat for the current tyremanagement mentality, look at the Fia and not Pirelli, they are just doing the job they were asked to do.

        1. They came in the moment refueling was banned

          Refueling was banned a year before Pirelli came in.

          1. Huh, I stand corrected.

            Still, 2010 could be considered a bridging year (no pun). Bridgestone already annouced in 2009 that they were pulling out, and 2010 was a perfect year for the FIA to analyze how the tyres under the “old” rules would hold out. Too good, I would guess. I remember Kobayashi running an entire race on one set, bar the last two laps to adhere to the 2-compound rule. Pirelli was announced in june 2010 as the sole supplier, with enough time to finetune FIA’s requests. So my point still stands.

    2. @hohum, isn’t it, to a certain extent, reflective of a declining interest in motorsport and cars as a whole?

      Quite a few motorsport series have been recording declining viewing and attendance figures – NASCAR, despite all of its tricks, has been slowly declining for several years now, the American Le Mans Series had to merge with the Daytona Prototypes series because neither series had enough fans to survive on their own, MotoGP viewing figures in the UK have collapsed after switching to BT Sport (although even then they’d fallen noticeably before that) and IndyCar has shown little measurable growth from what is a fairly low viewing base.

      The World Rally Championship is in an atrocious state – this is a series where the previous promoter went bankrupt because nobody wanted to watch the Sebastian Loeb roadshow – and attracts so few viewers that, back in 2013, there was a period of time where no media organisation in the UK wanted to bid for the rights to a series that couldn’t even muster 100,000 viewers (when, back in the late 1990’s and early 2000’s, the peak audience was around 1.6 million). The only series that has shown any signs of growth is the WEC, but that is coming from a pretty low base – they stated they had a record turnout for the 6 Hours of Silverstone, but that came in at just 40,000 (a long way from the heyday of sportscar racing in the 1990’s when crowds were closer to two or three times that size).

      1. ANON, I agree with your points but I think that straying away from the basic appeal of motorsport is doing more damage than good. As for WRC, I love it and it makes no difference to me who’s winning, just watching those cars scrabbling their way through forest tracks at insane speeds was enthralling, problem was I could never find TV coverage, it’s certainly not on any of the 20 FTA channels where I live. In conclusion if F1 got back to basics and the CRH slashed its revenue demands down to those of a merely excellent return on investment FTA coverage could increase and bring new fans with it, but the excitement has to be there for that (new fans) to happen.

    3. While I agree with some points, I feel that two equally important points are missing.
      1) Engineers learned a lot and computer-aided designed & strategy analysis matured a lot since the 1990’s. This is an important factor in declining unpredictability (=> increased boredom). There is no way to unlearn it.
      2) When I was a kid, we talked cars at school. My kids talk about computer games at school. The impact on motosport is obvious and I have absolutely no clue how to react properly, so it is hard to blame Bernie & FIA for now knowing either. Right now they appear clueless and clutching at straws. That said, I do believe that I could do better than them at this clutching (embracing new media, restructuring finances). But even when done perfectly, I am afraid the glory days of motosport are over. All hail the new Formula Internet, where the gas pedal movement and wheel movements are decided by on-line viewers on majority basis :-).

      1. pH , the strategy can’t be unlearned but it can be made irrelevant, either ban tyre changes or make the time it takes to change tyres too big a penalty to be advantageous then the strategy becomes; get to the front and stay there.

    4. ColdFly F1 (@)
      7th December 2015, 9:00

      @hohum
      Scenario 3 : Man and machine versus constantly changing rules!

    5. Tyre management can be negated by permitting them to carry and use more fuel. Unlimited fuel will push them to use the tyres more and we will see better raceing.

  6. Hey Lewis, that photo actually reminds me that it is never to early to start, all the best for Xmas and the New Year.

    1. So… You say that if you’re not being put into racing sims as a baby, don’t bother even thinking about taking up carting, it’s already too late?

    2. Hamilton still looks and sounds like a kid in this photo.

  7. I think it’s weird that streaming F1 isn’t legally available everywhere by now. I’ve been watching F1 from a paid stream since 2011 Belgian GP and although it does have technical hiccups from time to time overall it has been better experience than paid TV, because it is way more cheaper option.

    1. I live in New Zealand, and at the start of this year I saw an advert for it being streamed on the current rights holder’s Free to Air channel, so I bought it and was similarly impressed. If it wasn’t for streaming then I just wouldn’t be watching F1.

  8. What would the reaction be if Max had said he aspires to be just as good as his dad in F1?

    No offense to Jos, but if Max is asked what his ultimate dream goals are for F1 what does anyone expect him to say? Hopefully we can all look back in ten years from now and see how he was able to live up to his goals.

    It’s funny, folks say they don’t want their F1 drivers sounding like robots, but when a driver does answer a question with a non-robot response it somehow becomes upsetting and controversial to some. I try to imagine how I would have answered that question at the age of 18.

    Like Max or not, he races to be the best with a passion.

  9. If F1 had a broadcast delivery system through Amazon and the cost was reasonable, I would sign up in a heartbeat. Done correctly, low enough price to get as many subscribers as possible, a lot of money could be made. This should already be happening, as many have pointed out for years. I’m sure many F1 fans would sign up to pay a fair fee rather than trying to find dodgy streams on the net. Right now, that is lost income when it should be a revenue stream.

    1. It will be a huge failure if F1 isn’t affordable and on Amazon Prime(or as an app on some internet platform) in 2017. I will never go back to a TV bundle like Sky or Comcast and I think enough of the F1 audience is spending their money the same way; their must be a internet broadcast soon or viewership will continue to drop.
      The Now TV deal of 7pound(ten bucks) for raceday or 12pound(18 bucks) for the whole event is not a good deal and is only available to a small population.

    2. The majority of people simply don’t have the bandwidth to watch F1 over the internet at a quality level FOM was likely to accept, even taking into account that the majority will need a relatively low number of total pixels (moderate resolution… …but mobile phone-friendly screen size). Yes, a huge number of people are watching video over the internet, but the approach that requires is not “go stick this TV stream onto the internet”.

      That the current UK figures are so low despite a live stream being provided for half the races by BBC and all the races by Sky in a mobile-adaptable format suggests that the main problems are elsewhere, and that switching to “pure play” internet would lose more viewers than it would gain. (Though the difference decreases each year, not only due to the increased interconnectedness of people, but because F1 lends itself to “second screens” for things like live timing (why oh why does FOM not have a free version, when it is necessary to follow the race unless you have a big enough screen to see the broadcast live timing properly?) and social media support platforms).

  10. What FOM needs in the middle term then is a worldwide digital media platform that is already omnipresent. Amazon is already ready for all devices, is already in people’s homes, has a global footprint and would be able to roll out in different regions over the long term

    You can tell this author is disconnected from reality, how many countries actually have the Amazon video service available? Quick search tells me only 5 or 6 at the moment (I certainly didn’t know it even existed)

    Unfortunately I don’t think there’s a mid term solution for the mess Bernie has got himself in by signing exclusive contracts on every corner of the world, if we finally get that global direct subscription from FOM it will take many many years to roll out and some regions where English is not spoken will be probably be left out completely and be stuck with their sub-par local coverage anyway.

    1. @mantresx – If they found a way to tie it into existing video streaming services in each country or region it could work.

      In my case, I already have cable tv which includes the channels that broadcast F1. That wouldn’t stop if I subscribed to an F1 streaming service in addition. F1 streaming services could kick back a portion of their subscriptions to F1 cable/tv broadcasters in the country/region as compensation. There is a way to do it if FOM wants to make it happen, which is not apparent so far.

      Alas, you are likely correct that the exclusive contracts will keep this from happening for a long time.

    2. I am no expert in tv viewership and worldwide licensing. However, I think the TopGear deal on Amazon is enough evidence that there is a large enough english speaking audience to support an expensive automotive entertainment show. It is probably fair to say that a F1 multichannel and multilingual internet presence is too difficult to produce now, and too expensive and too far against the current business model. I think it is also fair to say that F1 is behind the trend by not making a deal with a subscription based service like Amazon that has an established app on the internet and hardware at the tv.
      I think a midterm solution should be Bernie’s sole focus, good luck to him to sort out the contracts. Or good riddance to him and good luck to his successor.

    3. Even in those 5-6 countries, a lot of people don’t have the bandwidth to be able to use a full-quality video service… …it’s a small part of the reason why illegal streams are (regrettably) so popular.

      Top Gear is mostly a big thing in the 5-6 countries in which Amazon is already available, and it costs at most £1 m per hour-long episode to produce (this being the maximum a non-sports show could bill the BBC). Even if Top Gear had as many “episodes” as F1, that would still be £20 m. Bernie charges the BBC £35 m for half-service and Sky something north of £50 m for a full season (£85 m total). So you’d be looking at making over 4 times the income, on a “reach” audience that is, at absolute best, a third of what F1 currently has. And remember you’re doing this when F1’s reputation is low. Are you confident that F1 could get 12 times its current audience using such a system? That is what it would take to make it work.

      1. @alianora-la-canta, there are reports suggesting that Amazon are throwing a huge amount of money at Top Gear – the Financial Times has suggested that the total bill for the three seasons that Amazon has paid for is around $250 million.

        1. That is a lot of money Amazon are spending compared to the BBC. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. It’s slightly more for 3 seasons of Amazon Top Gear than Bernie currently gets for 2 seasons of F1 in the UK…

  11. Max vesrstappen is good he can win world title too.But surely not in Alo,Ham bracket.No where near schumackar.

    1. He’s 18 and has one year in F1; it’s way too early to tell how good he really is.

  12. A Clio is a great car to have as your first. The best part about it: You don´t feel sad when you wreck it. I´ve wrecked two in my first two years of having a license ;)

    1. Aha, we’ve finally found Pastor Maldonado’s secret F1 Fanatic account!

      1. @neilosjames Nah, one wreck per year in the first two years and none in the following 15 years, that´s not enough to keep up with Pastor´s record ^^

  13. It’s a ridiculous thing to say actually, but since he’s 18 and he can compete at a good level another 18 years, it’s quite possible. I almost expect it to happen. That doesn’t change the fact that it’s unsettling to hear about it from him… It’s the same when Hamilton talks about Senna, it’s the same when Verstappen talks about these things. That’s one of the reasons why I’ve always liked Vettel so much. Everyone kept saying “ooh he’s arrogant” and such, but he’s always said that he doesn’t want to be the new Schumacher, hopefully he will be the new Vettel. That’s exactly the attitude I have in my life. That’s confidence imo, and a healthier outlook on life as well. And he can still win 4 more titles too. But compare what Vettel said last time someone mentioned equalling Schumacher to Verstappen’s attitude on the same issue.

    1. Did you actually watch the video, or are you just replying on the headline?

      1. Did you actually read the whole comment, or are you just replying to the first sentence?

    2. Paul do you read your own stuff? “It’s a ridiculous thing to say actually, but …….. , it’s quite possible.”

      Why would it be ‘ridiculus to say’ if it apparently is “quite possible”?

  14. Shame on Verstappen for aiming high!

    1. That’s right! The spoiled bratt will never win anything like that!

      ((…… It’s the WWW, so dear people, i was being ironic. ;)!) <= look, even a smiley!!!)

  15. I would be a bit disappointed if Red Bull drop Gasly. Sure he just went through 2 winless seasons, but then again his performance of 2014 was very good. Very consistent, almost always fast, couldn’t quite get that win but still second in his first year in FR3.5 is nothing to sneeze at.
    As for 2015, joint best rookie in GP2, matched Lynn who is highly regarded, has shown flashes of speed especially in qualifying, just needs to put it together now.

    I think he really deserves a second year in GP2. I don’t think RBR have much to lose by keeping him. There aren’t too many young drivers at the moment who seem to be better than him. Vandoorne, obviously, Ocon probably (but Ocon is in a junior programme already), but that’s about it. I think he’s probably as good as anyone who was in GP3 last year or FR3.5 this year. He beat Rowland last year, for example, as well as in 2013.

    1. RB is in such position with current driver line-up, that they can afford to ditch all non-special hot prospects. Both drivers of TR and RB still are very young and equally fast. No win in 2 seasons isn’t a good job.

      1. No win in 2 seasons isn’t a good job.

        That is a rather simplistic view. What is a win ultimately? One place better than second.
        Rowland won a few races in FR3.5 in 2014, but Gasly still drove better and more consistent overall. Why, then, would not winning a race be so bad or be more important than the fact he beat this year’s FR3.5 champion?

        Same kind of reasoning could apply for GP2 albeit he came in a bit lower (still top rookie though), which can be attributed partly to the fact some drivers stay in GP2 too long and beat others on experience instead of talent. To illustrate my point, there’s hardly anyone at this point who’s going to state that Palmer is a better driver than Vandoorne, but he could still beat him on experience. Likewise Haryanto has been in GP2 for a long time, Rossi has been at FR3.5/GP2 level for ages and you could make the case for Evans as well.

        Then there’s the question of who they would have to take. Who is a better prospect and not enrolled in another junior programme? Do you have the answer? From the top European series:
        – GP2: nobody.
        – GP3: maybe Kirchhöfer, then again being beaten by Ghiotto who was in his rookie year in GP3 is not good. Ghiotto didn’t do too well in FR2.0 Euro and FR3.5, I’m not at all convinced he is a really good driver.
        – FR3.5: nobody.
        – F3 Euro: maybe Leclerc, but hard to tell.
        – FR2.0 Euro: again too hard to tell. Rather inconsistent season for all of the top runners.

        Verstappen could be off to other grounds as early as 2017 – or he could promote internally to RBR for 2017. They will need another good driver at that point who’s ready for F1. If you’re suggesting they drop Gasly, then who will be that F1-ready driver at the end of next year?

        1. @mattds Would have been interesting to see Olsen sign with RB Juniors and drive Ilott’s car in F3 this year – with Ilott taking his place in Eurocup.

        2. Winning gives more pressure than driving second. I agree that experience gives an advantage, but that is not an excuse for not winning a race all season, or for 2 seasons. It may be bad luck like Ocon had this year, but he scored 9 consecutive 2nd place finishes (and won a title a year before).

          Verstappens consecutively won 7 races in first season in single seaters against experienced drivers like Rosenqvist and Giovanazzi. That’s a special hot prospect.

          Verstappen could be off to other grounds as early as 2017 – or he could promote internally to RBR for 2017. They will need another good driver at that point who’s ready for F1. If you’re suggesting they drop Gasly, then who will be that F1-ready driver at the end of next year?

          Yep, they only contracted Verstappen halfway season 2014, at the costs of the more experienced and fast Vergne. So they might look for a yet to be revealed 2016-junior class winning replacement.

          Or give RB this link ;-)

      2. They even let their very young and very fast quadruple world champion go.

    2. @mattds I doubt they’d drop him – there’d be no one else ready for F1 in 2017. They only have Stoneman and Ilott as back up; Ilott has only done one year of F3, while Stoneman missed out on his super-licence at the last FR3.5 round, after a misjudged tyre stop in drying conditions. Same situation for Evans, with the last GP2 race being cancelled.

      The real question now is who they will sign with an eye for the future – Ferrari are making a move for Leclerc, with Stroll going his own way. If they could do, Marko should really try and sign someone like Lando Norris, who in the past you’d think would sign for someone like McLaren.

  16. ColdFly F1 (@)
    7th December 2015, 8:39

    @philipgp, exactly.
    But then we know that many commenters don’t read the articles before they rush to make a comment!
    And even when @keithcollantine makes it easy for the illiterates and links in the video, commenters don’t even bother to watch that first.

    It was a great interview, and nothing ‘stupid’, ‘dumb’, or ‘cringeworthy’ came out of his mouth. Especially the road car question/answer (see also above) was funny.

    The only thing it lacked was an interview with the ‘personality of the year’ – a bit bland.

    1. Ironic that he’s bland on the one hand and being accused of arrogance and hubris on the other.

    2. ColdFly F1 (@)
      7th December 2015, 8:48

      Wanted to reply to @philipgb‘s earlier comment. But that comment (thread) seems to be gone now.

    3. @coldfly

      Wanted to reply to @philipgb‘s earlier comment. But that comment (thread) seems to be gone now.

      Yeah bizarre :)

      It boggles my mind when people just seem to want to hate on successful people and then find the reasons afterwards.

      I don’t see immaturity when he’s being interviewed and especially when he’s racing. He makes moves that the more experienced drivers on the grid may not also risk, but frankly he’s pulling them off. Of course we’ll see how that pans out once he’s dicing some some more experienced foe further up the field.

    4. What’s an illiterate doing around here? And how do they read and comment?

  17. The responses here make me weep for mankind. Seriously, a kid who’s just had an amazing rookie season in F1 gets showered with praise and awards. He gets asked what his goals are in F1. He’s 18. Realistically, and most likely, he will shatter all records the sport has. Love him or loath him, that’s just how it is. If he retires at the age Hamilton says he’ll retire (mid-thirties), and he’s in a top level car by his twentieth birthday (again, more likely than not) he’ll have 15 seasons to get 8 world championships. Never mind that the majority of journalists who actually know something about this (everyone at Sky, everyone at autosport.com, etc.) see him as a once in a generation talent, the best thing since the two S drivers. Never mind that the teams are already fighting behind the scenes for his signature for 2017. How dare he have the ambition to beat Schumacher? Because that’s all he is saying. Not ‘what do you think you’ll achieve?’. Not ‘what can you achieve?’. What do you aim for. Perfectly valid answer to give, perfectly valid ambition. The people on here having a go have no context whatsoever and are just using every possible way to attack Max Verstappen. Luckily for him, he’ll be proven right, which will make it all the better.

    1. here here.

      1. Spot on!!!

        Hahostolze your comment has just restored my believe in mankind, hopefully yours will be too soon.

  18. I haven’t watched the video, all I’ve read is the headline. However, unlike so many who seem all too eager to berate someone for speaking words in an order, my first reaction was

    That’s certainly ambitious; it’ll be fun watching him to see if he can actually do it.

  19. Have to admit I hadn’t sought out and heard MV speak other than the odd snippet here and there. What a level headed young lad with everything in the right perspective. I’m really impressed with what he had to say in that interview. This is a kid who has the world by the tail. Great stuff.

    For me it is not about the number of WDCs but the quality of them. I have very little respect for how MS compiled numbers and let’s face it, some drivers make the all time greats list without having won even one WDC, like Gilles Villeneuve.

    I have no doubt MV will end up in a position to have the equipment to win, and for sure there is every reason to believe he will win more than one WDC, such is the length of career ahead of him and the impression he has already left with the 3 prizes he has already been given. I do hope, and have no reason to believe otherwise, that he will win them with style and class, the same style and class he has shown in the interview above. What a bright light for F1. I hope F1 can get it’s act together for the sake of careers such as MV’s.

    1. I also hope he wins them by being the best driver on the grid when he does win. for comparison of another young hype… in Lewis Hamilton’s career, in the seasons he won championships, he has not done it dominantly, and never comes across as the best driver on the grid in his championships, there are other drivers outperforming him in worse cars. I didn’t see any better individual driving from the f1 field then the rookie Verstappen, a 17 year old rookie, he got the best from his car, was always fast, and did great overtakes that the drivers in better cars were not willing to do. I compare him to Hamilton and hope Verstappen keeps the upword momentum, as Hamilton has never done, Hamilton was the best in his rookie year and hasn’t matured or improved. Hamilton’s race pace and results always seem to correspond to his teammate’s progress over the year. his early f1 year achievements of domintating the other drivers at Hungaroring and Montreal are a memory, and he has not improved from those dominant races. I hope Verstappen takes the candle of being the next f1 “Superstar”, Vettel could take it back next year if the Ferrari is .5 seconds within reach of Hamilton’s Mercedes, as Vettel still has superstar speed as shown how he trounced Raikonnen this year.

  20. a bit of perspective on the “big troubling times” our heroes Bernie and Jean are now going to tackle to save the desperate guys of the red cow and fix F1 in the process!

    Nice read really

  21. We don’t need any new media platform for watching F1. Sometimes the old ways are best. Just put it on free to view terrestrial television, the viewing figures will increase, sponsors will return, fans will be happier, casual watchers will return ( some will be tomorrows fanatics ), advertising revenues will increase. There is no downside, even with the lower TV rights revenue FOM will benefit through the goodwill factor from fans and commercial partners.

    Hiding F1 behind a paywall just won’t work.

  22. This kid Verstappen is the new “Alonso” of formula 1.

  23. Bernie isn’t going to take f1 to amazon in fact I’d be surprised if he even knew what amazon/netflix even is. Bernie knows that he will have both sky and BT bidding for tv rights next time and he knews that will be where he cashes in next.

  24. It will be interesting to see how he does in his second season.
    It seems like many have already anointed him Senna’s successor. If Sainz wouldn’t have had all those DNF’s and out pointed him, I wonder if he would have garnered all the hype.
    Typical media hype – he hasn’t done anything spectacular and is treated (and acts) like a star.

    1. Even without all the problems Sainz had this season, a blind man could see that Sainz doesnt have half the talent Verstappen has

  25. it depends so much on luck with cars, the only one with a real shot right now is sebastian vettel, if he can win it next year then ferrari get it right with the 2017 regulations, then that’s basically 7 right there, real chance vettel will get schumacher sooner rather than later, and again max will have to start young to beat schumacher and it looks like he’ll be at ferrari in 2017, so he’ll have to beat vettel the original RB wonder boy at his peak, more importantly a 4-5 time WDC at his peak while he’s still only 19 and vettel looked every but as good as max in a toro rosso if not better, all of this does not bode well for him

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