Max Verstappen’s father thinks the Red Bull driver and new back-to-back world champion could utterly dominate the next several Formula 1 seasons.
Even 25-year-old Verstappen’s teammate Sergio Perez had to admit after the Japanese GP that the Dutchman is currently close to untouchable.
“Once he feels comfortable, he drives at a different level,” he said.
Sunday’s race at Suzuka was clouded by treacherous conditions, delays, new criticism of the FIA’s race management in 2022 and initial confusion about whether Verstappen would be awarded the points he needed for the early title win.
But his father, former F1 driver Jos, says he was comfortably relaxing at home in Europe when the FIA finally declared that Verstappen had secured the title.
“I’m usually on site but I’ve been travelling for quite a while and entering Japan wasn’t the easiest,” he told Viaplay.
“The pressure last year became unbearable and when it was all over we were overcome with incredibly powerful emotions.
“It was very different this year as we knew the title would come sooner or later, we just didn’t know when.”
And now Verstappen senior thinks his son can continue to dominate – perhaps all the way to the end of the current regulations era in 2025.
“The rules will remain largely the same, the field will therefore come closer together and we will have better races,” said Jos.
“But the strongest driver always floats to the top. If Red Bull continues like this, we will certainly have a nice five years.”
Jos Verstappen, 50, manages his son’s career in collaboration with his own former manager Raymond Vermeulen.
Vermeulen said: “I was asking the team where we stood with the title and they weren’t quite sure.
“The screen was showing ‘world champion 2022’ so it was a bit of a strange conclusion – but in the end the title was coming anyway.
“It’s really nice that it happened here,” he said in Japan.
“What he was doing in the rain and those laptimes compared to Charles (Leclerc) and Checo (Perez) was in another category.”
(GMM)
