In the past, Max Verstappen has produced some of his most phenomenal drives when he’s been angry or frustrated. Red Bull mechanic Calum Nicholas agrees with this hypothesis as he highlights the Dutchman’s win at the 2024 São Paulo GP, a race weekend that was incredibly frustrating for the 27-year-old and the rest of the Red Bull team.
Verstappen‘s weekend started badly after he got knocked out in Q2 during Qualifying and then it got worse because of a five-place grid penalty. This meant that he had to start the race all the way back from 17th.
But Verstappen used this frustration to his advantage as he used it as motivation to produce one of the most sublime performances he has ever produced. Remembering that weekend, Nicholas said on the High-Performance Podcast, “Some of Max’s best weekends are when you make him angry”.
“Brazil this year was [the] perfect example of that. Things weren’t going our way. We were upset with some of the things that had happened in Qualifying. So, we were all a little bit angry about the whole thing. In that situation, Max is just going to go out and give it absolutely everything and that’s how you do a drive from 17th to first,” he added.
STARTS P17, FINISHES P1
MAX VERSTAPPEN WINS THE 2024 SAO PAULO GRAND PRIX!!
What an extraordinary drive #F1 #BrazilGP pic.twitter.com/0KnYj1862x
— Formula 1 (@F1) November 3, 2024
How the weekend had unfolded for Verstappen up to that point was completely out of his hands. The grid penalty he had gotten was for an ICE change, and his Q2 elimination was owing to a Red Flag caused by Lance Stroll. But there have also been times when the Dutchman was left fuming at his own team.
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At the end of the day, the #1 driver sealed his fourth-consecutive world championship at the Las Vegas GP, with two races to spare. But internally, he was left frustrated with some of the decisions made by the team on the pit wall and towards the performance of the RB20.
The Hungarian GP was the prime example when a struggling Verstappen lashed out at his team and his engineer, Gianpiero Lambiase, on the team radio comms. But Nicholas explained that none of the team members were offended by the Dutchman’s tirade.
“We’re never going to sit in the garage and take it personally,” Nicholas explained before adding, “Max is there to race and win and there’s no one in the garage that has an issue with that. We’re not going to go home and go, ‘oh my God he said some mean things on the radio today‘”.
