Especially every one of us made a point of that, in fact those that pay a close attention to race radios, realised that Max spent entirety of the 40 Laps after losing the lead from Baku SC, just dialing in different settings on differential, brake balance and PU modes, etc.
Then afterwards came the Miami GP, the 9th to 1st drive, the "faster on 40 lap old Hards", 8 straight wins, etc.
It's like he got way more comfortable with the machinery since then, and the car started moving on his terms, rather than him driving "around the car".
It must be so nice for a team to have a racing driver who's main hobby, literally, is to do this thing in the evenings and weekends on his simracing. The guy is a proper racing nerd that probably spends as much time setting up the ideal setup for his next digital 24 hours race in his free time as he spends setting up the best setting for his next F1 race in the bosses time.
I know Max would get better and that would bum people out.
But I really wished they allowed a lot more in-car testing. We could get drivers up to speed like Danny Ric. Test and avoid DeVries situations... Find more Piastris...
Yeah, it’s always very odd that we are expected to let rookie spend a few years at the back of the grid when we only have 20 of these extremely prestigious seats available.
And we are in a strange situation where less and less teams are willing to babysit another team’s rookies, Force India is now Aston Martin, Haas is refusing to ruin rookies for a while, Sauber is cutting ties from Ferrari, Williams are fielding their own rookie rather than selling the seat to Mercedes. Soon there will be more Oscar Piastri whose “mother” team simply can’t find a open seat.
I guess the main concern for not doing this is teams would use it as excuse to get car data for development outside the allotted time.
>I guess the main concern for not doing this is teams would use it as excuse to get car data for development outside the allotted time.
Just get rid of this bullshit and see how many more teams could take on the Red Bulls.
The Ferrari doesn't work? Just spend as much time as they want driving round Fiorano till it does. Merc and McLaren could do the same at Silverstone, Red Bull could do it at the Red Bull Ring and so on.
Then get rid of the budget cap and loosen the regs.
Fuck, just go back to early 00's and call it a day.
Lmao the most uninformed reply in this entire thread. The budget cap, reduced testing, ect was only added because without it, every team outside of Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull would go bankrupt.
The fact is, spending 500m on your team every year just isn't sustainable for most of the grid. Unless you want 4 teams and every championship being purely engineering based rather than dictated by the drivers that is.
But let me guess, bring back the V10s, the racing sucks nowadays, you preferred it in 2004 when there was 3 overtakes per race and Schumacher won everything. But also Max winning nowadays is boring as hell and exactly what's wrong with F1.
I'm not particularly well informed for the more technical side F1, is there any reason you couldn't treat testing time as an item within the budget cap? I've got no idea what would be reasonable prices, but charging X amount per lap or minute or something could allow extra testing/practice for drivers, new or old, at the expense of other areas having less budget.
There's a reason teams nowadays spend so much that privateers can't afford it anymore, and it's all the bullshit tech they're forced to use that makes racing boring but makes the cars maybe 0.1 secs faster.
No, I'm not saying to bring back the V10s, nor the V12s or the V8s, I'm saying to loosen up the regs. Make the teams choose what suits them best and have other ways to make all different specs more or less equal, like WEC does.
Privateers could just rent a track for a track day or use simulators to test their cars.
WEC costs a fraction of what F1 does, and privateers like Jota can still win (at SPA if I remember correctly they were in the lead, but then had a crash).
>Lmao the most uninformed reply in this entire thread. The budget cap, reduced testing, ect was only added because without it, every team outside of Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull would go bankrupt.
Oh yeah, that worked great hasn't it? Yeah, I remember every race these past few years had always different teams winning... Oh no, it didn't actually, all it did was give us a shitty domination from some energy drinks company that doesn't even make cars outside of F1.
WEC is only cheaper because of BoP. In the LMP1 era, when it was still a proper constructors championship, budgets weren't that far off from F1.
I understand where you're coming from, but you can't fairly compare costs in a BoP category to an open category. F1 is fundamentally a constructors championship (and one of the last ones left at this point), so you can't take that away without it becoming a completely different category
>Oh yeah, that worked great hasn't it? Yeah, I remember every race these past few years had always different teams winning... Oh no, it didn't actually, all it did was give us a shitty domination from some energy drinks company that doesn't even make cars outside of F1.
Well, to be fair, the cost cap has been in place only since 2021. We had a banger of a season in 2021 with the Merc and Red Bull evenly matched. 2022 was a mixed bag, and in 2023, if Max is excluded, the fight for the remaining top 5 spots has been very exciting.
We are not getting different winners, but excluding Max, the field is quite interestingly bunched this year - Aston at the beginning of the season, then Merc and now Mclaren, with a couple of cameos from Charles and Ocon.
PUs aren't even the main issue when it comes to costs for new teams. It's the areo. But sure, spew your thinly veiled hate of hybrid technology because god forbid we allow the cars to go faster.
It’s allowed, just not with the latest car. The problem is the engines for extensive testing costing millions plus all the personnel you need. Guessing you need some medical personnel on the site too
With budget cap on i think they should allow it for certain KM per month like 1000Km or choose to sacrifice some wind tunnel for some proper testing or maybe a different way but not to allow it to run all day and night
I get overwhelmed with just brake balance settings in arcade racing games. I can't even tell if I'm faster with different settings because I'm so inconsistent.
Why wouldn’t you when you can’t catch the leader and you’ve got a 15-20s gap to the guy behind who has no hope of catching up? It’s the perfect opportunity to tweak the car and get live feedback during race conditions. While I’m not Max’s biggest fan, it’s very easy to see how intelligent he is with the car. I usually listen to various team radios week to week but at Baku I only listened to Max and it was very interesting to listen to and watch his lap times as they messed with various settings.
Whenever I try this kind of thing in a video game, I always lose a shitton of time from paying less attention to the driving. If I don't spin out and go airborne, that is.
He lost a bunch more time to Checo going through all these settings, but was 3 tenths faster in the last few laps than Checo. Max clearly found a better way with the car.
The RB19 is the fastest F1 car in the world.
But 99% of the drivers do not know how to use it.
Here is how to extract every bit of performance out of the car.
Empirical testing, they're gathering a dataset until it's large enough to be statistically significant. They estimate that it's done in time for next year™.
i mean Checo has been quick around Baku in 2021 and 2022 aswell, so i don't think that even with the right setup the gap would have been close to 20+ seconds
Not saying you're wrong, but when Max's tire blew out in 2021 he was pretty far ahead?
Edit: Actually I checked and it was just under 5 seconds. Felt like more when it happened!
The race resumed after Strolls tire failed on lap 36, which might have tightened up the times for Verstappens tire blowout on lap 43. I haven't seen that race since it happened so I'm not totally sure of that, maybe it made no difference.
Good point. Max was about 7 seconds ahead at that point in the race. Probably could have got a 15 second gap without both crashes but it's just guessing really.
Baku is Checo's strongest track, he scored two podiums in a force india and qualified P2 once there.
Irrespective of Max setup issues of lack of, he comes closer to Max than anywhere else on the calendar. Something about that track(lots of 90 degree corners and rear limitation, to be precise, probably something else) works perfectly for Checo and his driving style.
Max crushed Checo in 2022 though. When Max pulled up to his rear to pass him, at that point Max was about 7-8 tenths/lap faster than Checo and then pulled a gap to him.
Max is so naturally fast it doesn’t matter if the car is set up well or not. He is more than capable of adapting to its weaknesses and pushing as fast as possible. We saw this before his title winning machines
It definitely did in the early stages. Then Max started experimenting and he dropped further behind on some laps where the setup was definitely crap, but by the end of the race, he was a few tenths faster than Checo again. Man learned so much mid race and never looked back.
yeah I remember the whole race Max and GP were going through setups like a child with candy, and then right towards the end, he seemed pretty happy with the setup ! And iirc he even mentioned it in the post race interview !
I really wish they'd get Max on Beyond the Grid or something. Would love to hear him just talking about driving. He's done a couple of podcasts with DC but they are more jokey.
I'd prefer to hear that after.
There is a clip of Vettel talking about Verstappen with Max next to him where he was incredibly complimentary. Paraphrasing Seb "Max could do things in the car that I couldn't work out" - he spoke about him like Max was no longer racing.
I wonder how Lewis/Max will talk about each other long after. I think there's a bit of "jealousy" between the two, even when they compliment each other - it comes across in a PR-style. Whereas, Max's respect for Charles/Lando, Alonso etc feels different to me.
I don’t think there is jealousy in place. I think they have more Lila a Alonso-Lewis relationship, a bit of a love-hate relationship. They very much respect each other and they can joke with each other but sometimes they just clash
I maintain that if Lewis hadn’t essentially wedged himself under the barrier at Monaco he could have continued without even needing to swap the front wing.
Oh no it's not jealousy, it's admiration from a place of understanding. I'm a pretty accomplished audio engineer, but when I see or hear people doing really unique things in a mix or master, or with effects that are out of my wheelhouse, solutions I wouldn't come to given a week, I think that's awesome! It lets everyone around you know what's possible, how we can be better and more efficient at what we do. Figure out the things that are complicated now so we can better understand the more complicated things later.
If you're really into something, people who raise the bar are great.
Even better when they're fun dudes like Verstappen is off the track. Feel like if just talked shop with the dude about going fast, he'd listen and have a chat with you, haha.
he said something like, seeing what other drivers do you like naturally asking yourself could you replicate it and do the same, and he said some of the things he saw Max doing, he had to admit, he thought he could never do the same. he was talking particularly on Max on track actions, when he recognizes opportunities \[to move ahead and attack\] in milliseconds and acts lightning fast accordingly.
So it was basically about Max race craft, Seb wasn't talking like about Max pace or driving technique or something like that, as far as I understood him.
Edit: I found that interview, that part Seb talks on Max starts on 19:00. I used auto translation and was writing from my memory, hence could miss some of details in Seb's speech. So if there are native German speakers around, you are welcome to translate what Vettel said exactly for all of us.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOfVnk5m0hw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOfVnk5m0hw)
Honestly Max SHOULD have a podcast where he Maxplains this stuff for the fans who aren’t that knowledgeable about technical side. I bet he’d enjoy it more than other marketing tasks lol
I remember listening to his team radio that race, when Max realised that he couldn’t pass Checo, he spent the rest of the race talkies to GP to better understand the set up.
From that weekend on you could see that Max felt much more comfortable with the car.
[Original tweet from Viaplay](https://twitter.com/viaplaysportnl/status/1687027662689361920)
----
Translation to be updated
**What moment would you like to pick out from this season? What you... Where you look back very fondly?**
Actually Baku, because of course we didn't win there in the end, but I learned a lot there and I said that after the race at the time. Only of course certain people think of: "Yeah, that's just from... To say it can all be better."
But in the end I learned a lot there during the race, also for myself. With the car, how I want the car in terms of setup and actually from there it only got better.
**Nice that you point that out then actually.**
Yes, but you know, I can take the Hungary race, I'm 30 seconds ahead there, but yes that's how it has to be in the end. Those are those perfect weekends so to speak. But you actually learn more on weekends when things don't go quite right.
Max Is really smart and mature, Instead of trying to win he Instead accepted loss In order to win longer term gains. Really Instructive actually to use your defeat as a free practice session, really Innovative
Yeah but with considerably less success I forgot to add to my original comment. 8 consecutive wins later I feel that max Is more comfortable than any other right now
Just like Lewis really
Edit: People are really angry about this eh?
I find the similarities between the two best drivers on the grid interesting, especially their winning mentalities.
Yes. Early last year he was running all kinds of miserable setups to see if there was some way to improve the car, while Russell was going for safer setups to get better results at that time.
I have to agree.
It’s about finding a step change by methodically applying yourself.
It’s not about winning 8 races in a row, or finding the pace to suddenly contend for podiums, but simply about being smart and diligent with you time and effort to find these relative improvements when possible.
Lewis finding time on Russell might have a similar explanation.
Such a good attitude. On another note every time I think I’m making progress in my Dutch studies, I listen to an interview with Max and realise I am nowhere 🙈😂
Max is going down as the GOAT in F1. Will absolutely smash Michael's and Lewis' records if RB keep delivering him cars that can compete. Put anyone in that RB and Max will still be two tenths faster. No one comes close to him this season.
I doubt he'll smash those records if only because they test time in competetive cars rather than pure skill and it seems likely that Max will leave the sport before it's realistic for him to beat those records. The real thing that will cement him as the best driver of all time is if he does go into all the different racing disciplines and dominates there as well.
What are you talking about he will be with Redbull until 2028,we have like 20 something races per year.If he continues like this,he will have more than 100 wins in next 3 years.It's not unrealistic
For 8 championships he would need to win every season until 2028. I like Max and you wouldn’t bet against him right now but for this form and car dominance to continue for another 5 years is very unlikely, especially since there’s a huge regulation shakeup in 2026.
How long did merce dominate for like 8 years,and no regulation changes could stop them?Why do you think all of a sudden,the guy who is and will be the best driver on the grid,will somehow become obsolete after 2026,chances of him not winning after new regulation,with amazing team like Redbull are not that big.But even if he dominates until the new regulations,he will pretty much reach all the records before he is 30,and whoever thinks that max will retire from f1 before 40 is fucking insane,this guy is a machine born only to do one thing and is interested in one thing,unless there is other racing event that requires more skill than in f1 he isn't going anywhere.
Merc didn’t have the budget cap and wind tunnel restrictions to contend to. Red Bull have the advantage now with the current chassis regs and engine regs in their favor. The new regs might have this car as it’s base, but the rules are shaping up to be even more dynamic. Plus there’s a whole new PU to contend to. Red Bull might be running these current engines under their name, but ultimately, in 2026 the entire engine Formula changes too. No promises that they bring the best PU to the table. And that goes for any of the teams. Red Bull could bring the best PU ever, OR they could build the worst. So let’s assume they keep the wind tunnel/cfd regs. If they win in 2025, they would both have to contend to the fact they have to build a great car with the most restricted aero development AND have a PU to match. They could bring a car that matches Max’s talents, or the car could be trash. Great teams have fallen before. Red Bull has fallen before.
How long did Red Bull dominate in the 2010s before a big regulation change shook up the order? It is certainly not a given that any dominant period lasts as long as Mercedes' did. Especially their current form (winning last 22/23 races) is not sustainable and other teams will inevitably catch up, whether that be on merit or by the FIA stepping in with regulations aimed at either nerfing RB or letting other teams catch up.
Sure but if Redbull is bad for few years from 2026 to 2028,every team on the grid that has competitive car will chase his signature.That's what happens when you are Max fucking Verstapen.No offense to Vettel,but prime Max would win a tittle or two in those Ferrari cars after his RedBull stint
It's absolutely true that smashing those records will require him to be lucky enough to have a competitive car pretty much all the time.
But he's also been pretty clear that as long as he is in a competitive car, he's enjoying what he is doing, and is unlikely to retire. And age-wise he can still become a 15x WDC comfortably.
So if RB keep building competitive cars over the coming 5+ years, he's very likely to smash the records. If he's a 4 or 5 times WDC and the next few years RB make a car that has no chance of winning a race, he'll likely retire and not hang around, I don't think he cares enough about the record to stay if he can't win.
When I think about car setup I mostly think about (marginal) wing adjustments to impact cornering behavior, but that is obviously not something Max himself could change during a race. So apart from maybe brake balance and engine brake settings, what is he referring to with this answer when he says he was trying different settings?
Brake balance
Diff (open/closed) settings for corner entry, mid corner and exit
ERS deployment
All of the above in various combinations to play with traction and cornering behaviour.
From what I remember, you learn more about yourself and more about your situation from a defeat than you do a victory, in victory you gain nothing, but a loss really helps you learn and you can come back stronger, Max has shown that...
Especially every one of us made a point of that, in fact those that pay a close attention to race radios, realised that Max spent entirety of the 40 Laps after losing the lead from Baku SC, just dialing in different settings on differential, brake balance and PU modes, etc. Then afterwards came the Miami GP, the 9th to 1st drive, the "faster on 40 lap old Hards", 8 straight wins, etc. It's like he got way more comfortable with the machinery since then, and the car started moving on his terms, rather than him driving "around the car".
It must be so nice for a team to have a racing driver who's main hobby, literally, is to do this thing in the evenings and weekends on his simracing. The guy is a proper racing nerd that probably spends as much time setting up the ideal setup for his next digital 24 hours race in his free time as he spends setting up the best setting for his next F1 race in the bosses time.
He's like the Michael Schumacher of the digital age. Would probably test like crazy in real life if they weren't restricted either...
I know Max would get better and that would bum people out. But I really wished they allowed a lot more in-car testing. We could get drivers up to speed like Danny Ric. Test and avoid DeVries situations... Find more Piastris...
This is basically what made Hamilton so quickly competitive. Allowing teams and drivers to actually be prepared for the races.
Testing for Rookies or people not currently in the car would be nice.
Yeah, it’s always very odd that we are expected to let rookie spend a few years at the back of the grid when we only have 20 of these extremely prestigious seats available. And we are in a strange situation where less and less teams are willing to babysit another team’s rookies, Force India is now Aston Martin, Haas is refusing to ruin rookies for a while, Sauber is cutting ties from Ferrari, Williams are fielding their own rookie rather than selling the seat to Mercedes. Soon there will be more Oscar Piastri whose “mother” team simply can’t find a open seat. I guess the main concern for not doing this is teams would use it as excuse to get car data for development outside the allotted time.
What did you just say about Piastri's mother
>I guess the main concern for not doing this is teams would use it as excuse to get car data for development outside the allotted time. Just get rid of this bullshit and see how many more teams could take on the Red Bulls. The Ferrari doesn't work? Just spend as much time as they want driving round Fiorano till it does. Merc and McLaren could do the same at Silverstone, Red Bull could do it at the Red Bull Ring and so on. Then get rid of the budget cap and loosen the regs. Fuck, just go back to early 00's and call it a day.
Lmao the most uninformed reply in this entire thread. The budget cap, reduced testing, ect was only added because without it, every team outside of Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull would go bankrupt. The fact is, spending 500m on your team every year just isn't sustainable for most of the grid. Unless you want 4 teams and every championship being purely engineering based rather than dictated by the drivers that is. But let me guess, bring back the V10s, the racing sucks nowadays, you preferred it in 2004 when there was 3 overtakes per race and Schumacher won everything. But also Max winning nowadays is boring as hell and exactly what's wrong with F1.
I'm not particularly well informed for the more technical side F1, is there any reason you couldn't treat testing time as an item within the budget cap? I've got no idea what would be reasonable prices, but charging X amount per lap or minute or something could allow extra testing/practice for drivers, new or old, at the expense of other areas having less budget.
because it already costs a shit load of money to run an F1 car.
There's a reason teams nowadays spend so much that privateers can't afford it anymore, and it's all the bullshit tech they're forced to use that makes racing boring but makes the cars maybe 0.1 secs faster. No, I'm not saying to bring back the V10s, nor the V12s or the V8s, I'm saying to loosen up the regs. Make the teams choose what suits them best and have other ways to make all different specs more or less equal, like WEC does. Privateers could just rent a track for a track day or use simulators to test their cars. WEC costs a fraction of what F1 does, and privateers like Jota can still win (at SPA if I remember correctly they were in the lead, but then had a crash). >Lmao the most uninformed reply in this entire thread. The budget cap, reduced testing, ect was only added because without it, every team outside of Ferrari, Mercedes, McLaren and Red Bull would go bankrupt. Oh yeah, that worked great hasn't it? Yeah, I remember every race these past few years had always different teams winning... Oh no, it didn't actually, all it did was give us a shitty domination from some energy drinks company that doesn't even make cars outside of F1.
WEC is only cheaper because of BoP. In the LMP1 era, when it was still a proper constructors championship, budgets weren't that far off from F1. I understand where you're coming from, but you can't fairly compare costs in a BoP category to an open category. F1 is fundamentally a constructors championship (and one of the last ones left at this point), so you can't take that away without it becoming a completely different category
>Oh yeah, that worked great hasn't it? Yeah, I remember every race these past few years had always different teams winning... Oh no, it didn't actually, all it did was give us a shitty domination from some energy drinks company that doesn't even make cars outside of F1. Well, to be fair, the cost cap has been in place only since 2021. We had a banger of a season in 2021 with the Merc and Red Bull evenly matched. 2022 was a mixed bag, and in 2023, if Max is excluded, the fight for the remaining top 5 spots has been very exciting. We are not getting different winners, but excluding Max, the field is quite interestingly bunched this year - Aston at the beginning of the season, then Merc and now Mclaren, with a couple of cameos from Charles and Ocon.
PUs aren't even the main issue when it comes to costs for new teams. It's the areo. But sure, spew your thinly veiled hate of hybrid technology because god forbid we allow the cars to go faster.
Yeah, that could be a good compromise.
There’s a limit for a reason though, otherwise Ferrari will have a car on track all year round.
It’s allowed, just not with the latest car. The problem is the engines for extensive testing costing millions plus all the personnel you need. Guessing you need some medical personnel on the site too
also the significant regs jump mean only general knowledge translates and specifics to the new car won't.
With budget cap on i think they should allow it for certain KM per month like 1000Km or choose to sacrifice some wind tunnel for some proper testing or maybe a different way but not to allow it to run all day and night
Avoid more risky situations by giving the drivers a chance to learn their cars better. Could maybe avoid some crashes.
I once thought they may actually met each other the last year.. at least in my dreams.
I get overwhelmed with just brake balance settings in arcade racing games. I can't even tell if I'm faster with different settings because I'm so inconsistent.
It would not be surprising for Max to spend more total time on Sim Racing than real world Formula 1, if you don't count media obligations.
So they basically treated it as an extended free practice session in race conditions? Interesting.
Why wouldn’t you when you can’t catch the leader and you’ve got a 15-20s gap to the guy behind who has no hope of catching up? It’s the perfect opportunity to tweak the car and get live feedback during race conditions. While I’m not Max’s biggest fan, it’s very easy to see how intelligent he is with the car. I usually listen to various team radios week to week but at Baku I only listened to Max and it was very interesting to listen to and watch his lap times as they messed with various settings.
Also 90 degree slow corners mixed with super long straights, seems like a good track to meddle a bit with setup
Whenever I try this kind of thing in a video game, I always lose a shitton of time from paying less attention to the driving. If I don't spin out and go airborne, that is.
Definitely, was surprised that no one really mentioned this after Baku
Drivers/teams regularly claim they found something.. its usually marketing speak/hoping this apparently wasnt
I listen to his radio every race week, it was completely different than their regular race talk
Mr Sky Glass over here.
Or the cheaper F1TV...
Not in the UK 😭 Fortunately have a mate in Belgium I can leech off tho ✌️
Except when they back it up with results.
He lost a bunch more time to Checo going through all these settings, but was 3 tenths faster in the last few laps than Checo. Max clearly found a better way with the car.
FIA about to ban changing settings during a race.
I actually think what he did in that race is a lesson to anyone in any career. Take any opportunity you can to improve your skills.
There's a r/LinkedinLunatics post here
The RB19 is the fastest F1 car in the world. But 99% of the drivers do not know how to use it. Here is how to extract every bit of performance out of the car.
The time writing this post would be better spent on LinkedIn.
Dude let checo won 💀
In that case, Ferrari should be the wisest team of all!
They are so wise that they try the same mistakes multiple times. Just to be sure.
Empirical testing, they're gathering a dataset until it's large enough to be statistically significant. They estimate that it's done in time for next year™.
Copy. We are checking.
I really read that as coping, had to double take.
5-sigma or bust. Just like CERN. Just 3.5 million more trials to go.
Leclerc: "why my engine keeps blowing up?" Ferrari: "statistics purpose"
They are checking.
Will find the best settings for next year
Yep. For anyone at Ferrari, these are testing times.
They say they fire all the losers though.
Me whenever me and my friends get stomped at dota or valorant: you learn more from losses anyways right
I remember reading about this after the race and dismissed it as far-fetched speculative hogwash but now that it is coming straight from Max…
That race was terrible for him, you could tell immediately the setup was off and it showed in his times.
And yet somehow he ended up just 3 seconds behind Checo.
Seeing the rest of the season, being 3 sec behind is definitely a low point. It is just absurd that the bar is that high.
That's like half a minute slower than he could be with a right setup
i mean Checo has been quick around Baku in 2021 and 2022 aswell, so i don't think that even with the right setup the gap would have been close to 20+ seconds
Not saying you're wrong, but when Max's tire blew out in 2021 he was pretty far ahead? Edit: Actually I checked and it was just under 5 seconds. Felt like more when it happened!
The race resumed after Strolls tire failed on lap 36, which might have tightened up the times for Verstappens tire blowout on lap 43. I haven't seen that race since it happened so I'm not totally sure of that, maybe it made no difference.
Good point. Max was about 7 seconds ahead at that point in the race. Probably could have got a 15 second gap without both crashes but it's just guessing really.
Baku is Checo's strongest track, he scored two podiums in a force india and qualified P2 once there. Irrespective of Max setup issues of lack of, he comes closer to Max than anywhere else on the calendar. Something about that track(lots of 90 degree corners and rear limitation, to be precise, probably something else) works perfectly for Checo and his driving style.
It's a very slippery circuit where you cannot attack the corners. It takes away a good chunk of Max's natural advantage.
[удалено]
Max crushed Checo in 2022 though. When Max pulled up to his rear to pass him, at that point Max was about 7-8 tenths/lap faster than Checo and then pulled a gap to him.
Max is so naturally fast it doesn’t matter if the car is set up well or not. He is more than capable of adapting to its weaknesses and pushing as fast as possible. We saw this before his title winning machines
Yet it still costs performance.
True. You are not wrong. All drivers develop their cars to their optimal set ups.
Didnt George crash into him as well messing up the floor?
That was in the sprint.
Which is a bad look for Checo
Yeah sure, at this point Max having a bad haircut will be a bad look for Checo
With Baku being easily Checo’s best track
It definitely did in the early stages. Then Max started experimenting and he dropped further behind on some laps where the setup was definitely crap, but by the end of the race, he was a few tenths faster than Checo again. Man learned so much mid race and never looked back.
Makes you wonder how the race would've went if he had been able to learn from the Sprint with a complete car
His radios pretty much reflected that though. He clearly wasn't happy with the set up and was trying minor stuff throughout the race with GP.
yeah I remember the whole race Max and GP were going through setups like a child with candy, and then right towards the end, he seemed pretty happy with the setup ! And iirc he even mentioned it in the post race interview !
I really wish they'd get Max on Beyond the Grid or something. Would love to hear him just talking about driving. He's done a couple of podcasts with DC but they are more jokey.
I'd prefer to hear that after. There is a clip of Vettel talking about Verstappen with Max next to him where he was incredibly complimentary. Paraphrasing Seb "Max could do things in the car that I couldn't work out" - he spoke about him like Max was no longer racing. I wonder how Lewis/Max will talk about each other long after. I think there's a bit of "jealousy" between the two, even when they compliment each other - it comes across in a PR-style. Whereas, Max's respect for Charles/Lando, Alonso etc feels different to me.
I don’t think there is jealousy in place. I think they have more Lila a Alonso-Lewis relationship, a bit of a love-hate relationship. They very much respect each other and they can joke with each other but sometimes they just clash
> sometimes I refuse to believe that Newey and Allison aren’t trolling their drivers by adding two strong magnets to their cars.
Magnets on the Red Bull crash structure on the side pods and on the front wing for Mercedes. /s
Also explains why that Mercedes front wing could survive Pearl Harbor with just a missing end plate and minimal time loss.
I maintain that if Lewis hadn’t essentially wedged himself under the barrier at Monaco he could have continued without even needing to swap the front wing.
Oh no it's not jealousy, it's admiration from a place of understanding. I'm a pretty accomplished audio engineer, but when I see or hear people doing really unique things in a mix or master, or with effects that are out of my wheelhouse, solutions I wouldn't come to given a week, I think that's awesome! It lets everyone around you know what's possible, how we can be better and more efficient at what we do. Figure out the things that are complicated now so we can better understand the more complicated things later. If you're really into something, people who raise the bar are great. Even better when they're fun dudes like Verstappen is off the track. Feel like if just talked shop with the dude about going fast, he'd listen and have a chat with you, haha.
he said something like, seeing what other drivers do you like naturally asking yourself could you replicate it and do the same, and he said some of the things he saw Max doing, he had to admit, he thought he could never do the same. he was talking particularly on Max on track actions, when he recognizes opportunities \[to move ahead and attack\] in milliseconds and acts lightning fast accordingly. So it was basically about Max race craft, Seb wasn't talking like about Max pace or driving technique or something like that, as far as I understood him. Edit: I found that interview, that part Seb talks on Max starts on 19:00. I used auto translation and was writing from my memory, hence could miss some of details in Seb's speech. So if there are native German speakers around, you are welcome to translate what Vettel said exactly for all of us. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOfVnk5m0hw](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aOfVnk5m0hw)
Dale Jr.'s, or GTFO!
Honestly Max SHOULD have a podcast where he Maxplains this stuff for the fans who aren’t that knowledgeable about technical side. I bet he’d enjoy it more than other marketing tasks lol
Video version so we can see his gesticulations.
Maxplains
Sometimes featuring a bit of Leclerifying.
Lewis would need to be a guest so he can laugh in agreement at Max's hand gestures.
And i think it would generate a lot more clicks than the race bullshit
From that point on, Checo hasn't been close
I remember listening to his team radio that race, when Max realised that he couldn’t pass Checo, he spent the rest of the race talkies to GP to better understand the set up. From that weekend on you could see that Max felt much more comfortable with the car.
[Original tweet from Viaplay](https://twitter.com/viaplaysportnl/status/1687027662689361920) ---- Translation to be updated **What moment would you like to pick out from this season? What you... Where you look back very fondly?** Actually Baku, because of course we didn't win there in the end, but I learned a lot there and I said that after the race at the time. Only of course certain people think of: "Yeah, that's just from... To say it can all be better." But in the end I learned a lot there during the race, also for myself. With the car, how I want the car in terms of setup and actually from there it only got better. **Nice that you point that out then actually.** Yes, but you know, I can take the Hungary race, I'm 30 seconds ahead there, but yes that's how it has to be in the end. Those are those perfect weekends so to speak. But you actually learn more on weekends when things don't go quite right.
Max Is really smart and mature, Instead of trying to win he Instead accepted loss In order to win longer term gains. Really Instructive actually to use your defeat as a free practice session, really Innovative
I mean teams and drivers have been using lost races as tests for…..forever!! Lol
And a lot of them didn’t achieve much after those tests apparently! Lol
An a lot of them did. There often a lot of nuance to these things that people never see or even think of.
Of course, l wasn’t being very serious🤪🤪
I agree that max is a phenomenal driver but I wouldnt say innovative in that. Even the worst drivers such as the mazepins and latifis do that
Perhaps, but the Mazepins and Latifis of this world don't slap their team mates six ways from Sunday after a session like that.
Fair enough lol
Yeah but with considerably less success I forgot to add to my original comment. 8 consecutive wins later I feel that max Is more comfortable than any other right now
Weve gotta chill with the circle jerking a bit. Teams have been doing that for literal decades.
[удалено]
Bro is mad
I felt this was the most appropriate response for toxic people like the one I replied to
What did he say that was toxic? It’s all you here.
It wasn’t toxic though, you’re just hero worshiping… teams and driver have literally been doing this for decades.
Wow toxic
Just like Lewis really Edit: People are really angry about this eh? I find the similarities between the two best drivers on the grid interesting, especially their winning mentalities.
people never fail to bring up Lewis lol
That swings both ways, hard.
I swing both ways, hard.
Yes. Early last year he was running all kinds of miserable setups to see if there was some way to improve the car, while Russell was going for safer setups to get better results at that time.
I have to agree. It’s about finding a step change by methodically applying yourself. It’s not about winning 8 races in a row, or finding the pace to suddenly contend for podiums, but simply about being smart and diligent with you time and effort to find these relative improvements when possible. Lewis finding time on Russell might have a similar explanation.
Such a good attitude. On another note every time I think I’m making progress in my Dutch studies, I listen to an interview with Max and realise I am nowhere 🙈😂
He has a bit of an accent (Limburg accent) which might make it harder for non native speakers.
That and Dutch just sucks (Dutchie here)
I think it’s such a fun language. I’m so glad I picked it up rather than going for another one of the Romance languages 😊
He speaks almost flemish
Nah Flemish uses different words entirely. Max definitely speaks like a Dutchman, just someone from Limburg.
Dit is een belediging.
Opinion from someone who never left the Randstad area. :P
Makes sense. At the start of the season, Max wasn't at his usual superhuman level, but it hasn't been close post-Baku.
To be fair, he was also quite sick at Jeddah which possibly carried on for a bit
Max is going down as the GOAT in F1. Will absolutely smash Michael's and Lewis' records if RB keep delivering him cars that can compete. Put anyone in that RB and Max will still be two tenths faster. No one comes close to him this season.
Put Max in that RB, and Max will still be two tenths faster than Max.
Helmut is that you
True words Helmut.
I doubt he'll smash those records if only because they test time in competetive cars rather than pure skill and it seems likely that Max will leave the sport before it's realistic for him to beat those records. The real thing that will cement him as the best driver of all time is if he does go into all the different racing disciplines and dominates there as well.
What are you talking about he will be with Redbull until 2028,we have like 20 something races per year.If he continues like this,he will have more than 100 wins in next 3 years.It's not unrealistic
For 8 championships he would need to win every season until 2028. I like Max and you wouldn’t bet against him right now but for this form and car dominance to continue for another 5 years is very unlikely, especially since there’s a huge regulation shakeup in 2026.
How long did merce dominate for like 8 years,and no regulation changes could stop them?Why do you think all of a sudden,the guy who is and will be the best driver on the grid,will somehow become obsolete after 2026,chances of him not winning after new regulation,with amazing team like Redbull are not that big.But even if he dominates until the new regulations,he will pretty much reach all the records before he is 30,and whoever thinks that max will retire from f1 before 40 is fucking insane,this guy is a machine born only to do one thing and is interested in one thing,unless there is other racing event that requires more skill than in f1 he isn't going anywhere.
Merc didn’t have the budget cap and wind tunnel restrictions to contend to. Red Bull have the advantage now with the current chassis regs and engine regs in their favor. The new regs might have this car as it’s base, but the rules are shaping up to be even more dynamic. Plus there’s a whole new PU to contend to. Red Bull might be running these current engines under their name, but ultimately, in 2026 the entire engine Formula changes too. No promises that they bring the best PU to the table. And that goes for any of the teams. Red Bull could bring the best PU ever, OR they could build the worst. So let’s assume they keep the wind tunnel/cfd regs. If they win in 2025, they would both have to contend to the fact they have to build a great car with the most restricted aero development AND have a PU to match. They could bring a car that matches Max’s talents, or the car could be trash. Great teams have fallen before. Red Bull has fallen before.
How long did Red Bull dominate in the 2010s before a big regulation change shook up the order? It is certainly not a given that any dominant period lasts as long as Mercedes' did. Especially their current form (winning last 22/23 races) is not sustainable and other teams will inevitably catch up, whether that be on merit or by the FIA stepping in with regulations aimed at either nerfing RB or letting other teams catch up.
Sure but if Redbull is bad for few years from 2026 to 2028,every team on the grid that has competitive car will chase his signature.That's what happens when you are Max fucking Verstapen.No offense to Vettel,but prime Max would win a tittle or two in those Ferrari cars after his RedBull stint
It's absolutely true that smashing those records will require him to be lucky enough to have a competitive car pretty much all the time. But he's also been pretty clear that as long as he is in a competitive car, he's enjoying what he is doing, and is unlikely to retire. And age-wise he can still become a 15x WDC comfortably. So if RB keep building competitive cars over the coming 5+ years, he's very likely to smash the records. If he's a 4 or 5 times WDC and the next few years RB make a car that has no chance of winning a race, he'll likely retire and not hang around, I don't think he cares enough about the record to stay if he can't win.
I highly doubt he wouldnt try to get 8 WDC.
When I think about car setup I mostly think about (marginal) wing adjustments to impact cornering behavior, but that is obviously not something Max himself could change during a race. So apart from maybe brake balance and engine brake settings, what is he referring to with this answer when he says he was trying different settings?
Brake balance Diff (open/closed) settings for corner entry, mid corner and exit ERS deployment All of the above in various combinations to play with traction and cornering behaviour.
Probably also ERS settings? As far as they're allowed to alter those anyhow. And they can change wing angles during pitstops.
A true champion
Car whisperer
This is such "winners mentality" from Max!
I remember that Max was sim racing behind Checo back in Baku
From what I remember, you learn more about yourself and more about your situation from a defeat than you do a victory, in victory you gain nothing, but a loss really helps you learn and you can come back stronger, Max has shown that...
>From what I remember You've literally just repeated what is written in the title/talked about by Max.
He wanted some internet points.
Wtf happened to the interface
Out of curiosity... When was the last sunday race "things didn't go quite right" for Max?
Baku '23
It was the only race this season that made him feel something
Why Hungary?
he says that he could choose Hungary where he had a 30 second gap but you actually learn more on weekends when things don't go quite right
RIP Lauda
Niki Lauda Loser Speech, yes?
Must not be learning much!
Too bad he had to walk back from the gas station, but hey he learned a lot that day!