Max Verstappen dominated the 2023 season, winning 19 races, breaking his own record of 15 wins in a calendar. Heading into 2024, most people expect the Red Bull driver to continue with this dominance. However, former F1 driver Johnny Herbert feels that there is someone Verstappen has to watch out for.
Herbert feels that the driver is none other than Charles Leclerc. Leclerc and Verstappen have given glimpses of how a championship battle between the two of them would look like. Unfortunately, the Monegasque’s team – Ferrari – always failed to provide a car that was consistently capable of challenging for wins. Herbert feels that may change in 2024.
“I think at the end of the year Charles showed that he is going in the right direction,” he exclusively told Planet F1. “Can he attack Max and Lewis? Absolutely and he proved that.”
At the beginning of 2022, Leclerc battled fiercely with Verstappen. 2023, however, turned out to be a completely different season for the Ferrari star. Not only was Ferrari weaker, Red Bull was considerably stronger which diminished any chance he had of challenging for a race win.
Herbert also feels that Leclerc’s battles with Verstappen which we saw back in 2022 prove that he is very capable of rising to the challenge of the three-time world champion.
Charles Leclerc’s ability to battle Max Verstappen
In the same interview, Herbert went on to talk about Leclerc’s ability to battle Verstappen. Most of the F1 community hails this current version of Verstappen as unstoppable, but Leclerc has always been tipped as a future champion, and to do so, he has to dethrone the reigning title holder.
“The battles they have had, wheel-to-wheel combat also showed that,” Herbert added. “They respect each other, I think that’s very, very important.”
Leclerc’s current deal with Ferrari runs out at the end of the 2024 season. However, it has been widely speculated that the 26-year-old has signed an extension that will keep him in Maranello until at least the 2029 season.
Whether that deal does fall through, or it turns out to be a good idea for Leclerc to pledge his future to Ferrari, is yet to be seen.
