Max Verstappen is now a three-time world champion and has arguably also established himself as the best driver on the current F1 grid. However, his rise to supremacy didn’t come overnight as revealed by his race engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, in a recent interview. The British-Italian engineer revealed how the 2018 F1 season helped the Dutchman mature and win his maiden championship three years later.
Speaking about this, Lambiase said in a video released by Oracle Red Bull Racing, “I think it was 2018 where he (Verstappen) had a fairly rough ride in the first six of seven races. I mean we couldn’t do anything but crash into something or somebody, I think that year.”
With this, Lambiase further added, “I think there was a turning point where he realized he needed to change or things are going in the wrong direction let’s say.” Admittedly, 2018 was the year that saw Verstappen lock horns with Daniel Ricciardo. Both drivers produced one of Red Bull’s fiercest intra-team tussles.
This was one of the deemed reasons why Ricciardo left the team at the end of the year. Since a top driver like Ricciardo left the team, the focus was all on Verstappen. The Dutchman used this to his advantage to develop more as a driver.
Lambiase believes that a year after, Verstappen got the realization that he needed to finish more races if he wanted to have any chance of winning the championship in the future. Verstappen then built on this in 2020 before going on to win his first of three championships in 2021.
Max Verstappen has been a class apart recently
Max Verstappen joined F1 in 2015 with Toro Rosso when he was just 17 years old. His Red Bull debut came a year later in 2016 and it was his first race with the team where he took his maiden GP win. It was the start of many for the mighty Dutchman.
In the recently concluded 2023 F1 season, the 26-year-old took 19 wins. In doing so, he broke Sebastian Vettel’s overall record of 53 race wins and entered the top three of most career victories by an F1 driver.
Apart from this, Verstappen also broke another record held by Vettel for a decade now. Verstappen won 10 consecutive races this season and shattered the previous record of nine that Vettel held.
Along with this, Verstappen also claimed a staggering 575 points to pick his third F1 world championship, something no other driver has done so far. As things stand, the 26-year-old is all set to continue his dominance in the coming years since the regulations remain relatively stable.
