“I think he will be faster than Hamilton”- Ex- F1 driver on Max Verstappen in a Mercedes

“I think he will be faster than Hamilton”- Ex-F1 driver is certain that Max Verstappen might end faster than Mercedes superstar Lewis Hamilton.

It has been argued that to know how good is Lewis Hamilton; Formula 1 has to place a driver near to his calibre to place alongside him. Valtteri Bottas with similar resources hasn’t been a challenge to the Briton, and Mercedes have accepted this.

However, the Brackley based team also argues that it doesn’t want to erupt another stardom conflict like it was between Hamilton and Nico Rosberg, the man who last challenged the former for a title.

And now witnessing Max Verstappen’s exploits, there is a demand of Verstappen being hired as the partner of Hamilton to spice up the contest in F1, adding onto it ex-F1 driver Marc Surer feels the Dutch race driver would be even faster than the reigning champion.

“I think Verstappen is one of the fastest young drivers in Formula One, together with [Charles] Leclerc,” said surer to Formula1News.co.uk. “So I think he will be faster than Hamilton because Hamilton used to be.”

“But after the age of 30, you start to lose a few hundredths of your speed. You will not notice it, but this is the truth.”

Doesn’t mean Hamilton would be easy to beat.

Despite ageing being described as a rational justification to the argument, Surer has also claimed that beating Hamilton wouldn’t be easier for Hamilton.

“But that doesn’t mean Verstappen would beat Lewis Hamilton easily, because if you look at the past, for example, if you look at Prost-Lauda [when they were team-mates at McLaren].”

“Prost was clearly faster than Lauda, but Lauda in one year won the Championship by being clever and having a better strategy. So, with experience, you can sometimes beat a younger, faster driver. The same also happened with Senna and Prost.

“So it’s not clear if Hamilton or Verstappen would win the Championship [as Mercedes team-mates.]”

About the author

Tanish Chachra

Tanish Chachra is the Motorsport editor at The SportsRush. He saw his first race when F1 visited India in 2011, and since then, his romance with the sport has been seasonal until he took up this role in 2020. Reigniting F1's coverage on this site, Tanish has fallen in love with the sport all over again. He loves Kimi Raikkonen and sees a future world champion in Oscar Piastri. Away from us, he loves to snuggle inside his books.

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