Jos Verstappen reflects back on how he approached Max Verstappen as a child and admits that he might have been a bit too harsh.
Recently, Jos Verstappen came under a lot of criticism for being an abusive parent to his son Max Verstappen.
This came after the reigning champion revealed specific incidents between him and his father in his childhood in a documentary. While he has no complaints and credits his father [Jos] for all his success, F1 fans did not agree with Verstappen Sr’s parenting.
Looking back at Max’s journey, Jos has now admitted that he was maybe sometimes a bit too hard. But Verstappen Sr thinks that his son needed it in order to grow.
The 24-year-old revealed in a documentary – Whatever it takes that one time Jos left him at a gas station for hours because he made a mistake in karting.
Max also shared that his father repeatedly bashed him and told him that he would never make a world champion and would be driving a ‘truck or a bus’ in the future.
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Max Verstappen is stubborn
Now that Max is a world champion after beating the seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton in a season-long battle in 2021, Jos says that the Dutchman needed the harsh treatment to toughen him up.
He said, “If you look back on that now, sometimes I was maybe a little too hard. At the moment, that felt like the right thing to do and maybe he needed it a little bit, too, because he is stubborn.”
“I also really believe that it made him better. He needed that regularly. In the following year, it made him better again. He became World Champion, a two-time European Champion, and had won all the races along the way.”
“At all times he was learning a lot and I believe that makes him very mature for his age.”
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“Max is much better than me” – Jos
Furthermore, when asked if the young Red Bull driver is better than he ever was, the 50-year-old said “absolutely” without hesitation.
Jos, who raced for Benetton, Tyrrell and Minardi in F1 said that he can teach everything to his son, but he has to have the talent himself and Max is talented.
“He is smarter than me and processes everything better. He is much better than me. I know when I look in the mirror what mistakes I made in my career. I try to filter them out with him,” Jos added.
As for Max’s opinion of his father’s methods, he believes they “prepared me for everything”. “At some points, it was a hard school, but a fair one. He prepared me for everything. I never encountered anything I didn’t know how to handle,” Max said.
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