Kelly Piquet’s former partner Daniil Kvyat has recently welcomed Max Verstappen for a duel. The former Red Bull star said he would love to take on the defending F1 champion in a wheel-to-wheel battle.
Kvyat lost his Red Bull seat back in 2016 to Verstappen after a series of poor performances. The higher-ups of the Austrian team decided to hand the young Dutchman his big break, and it’s believed they do not regret the decision now.
The Russian driver, on the other hand, had to go back to Toro Rosso and take the Dutchman’s seat and make the seat swap possible. As Kvyat lost his Red Bull seat to the two-time world champion, this isn’t the only repentance he has in life.
The former F1 star also talked about how he lost his then-partner Kelly Piquet to Verstappen. The duo was romantically involved with each other from 2017 to 2019 and has a daughter together. But a few months later, the duo parted ways.
Daniil Kvyat wants to take on Max Verstappen
The two drivers have never been into a one-to-one battle, be it in Red Bull or Toro Rosso, since they were never teammates to each other. While the Russian was in the main team, the Dutchman was in the sister team, and vice versa.
But now, coming in 2023, Kvyat believes he would have loved having the defending champion head-to-head. Speaking in Track Limits podcast recently, the 29-year-old revealed his thoughts.
He stated, “For me, at the beginning, he was just the next driver to join the team. It seemed that way for a while, but in the end, I was promoted to Red Bull. Unfortunately, we never drove side by side, that would have been interesting.”
The former Red Bull man, however, added that the team helps Verstappen to achieve success as much as possible. On the topic of orchestration, Kvyat said, “Red Bull gives him everything he needs. He gets everything he wants.”
Kvyat vs Verstappen head-to-head statistics
When it comes to head-to-head between the two former Toro Rosso stars, there isn’t much to tie them together. The Dutchman leads the Russian star by miles when it comes to statistics.
5 years ago today, Red Bull shocked the F1 world by announcing 'the swap' between Max Verstappen and Daniil Kvyat…
And of course F1 decided to put them in the press conference together at the very next race. pic.twitter.com/m0sULvo1jV
— WTF1 (@wtf1official) May 5, 2021
The 25-year-old is a two-time world champion and a multiple-time GP winner, whereas Kvyat finished his career without a win.
Max Verstappen so far has 38 race wins, and 82 podiums in all 168 race starts he had. Compared to that, Daniil Kvyat has no race wins, three podiums in 112 race entries.
