The plaudits poured in for Max Verstappen after he clinched his fourth world title within the Las Vegas Grand Prix, as his rivals queued as much as pay tribute to a towering achievement from a driver recognised as one of many all-time greats of System 1.
Each single one in every of Verstappen’s friends recognised this efficiency for what it’s – an nearly flawless season from a driver who didn’t have the perfect automotive for almost all of the season.
Lando Norris, who ran him closest, mentioned: “Huge congrats to him. He is deserved it. He has not put a foot unsuitable the entire 12 months. That’s a power of his. He has no downsides, no negatives.
“When he’s had the quickest automotive, he dominated races. When he’s not had the quickest automotive, he nonetheless been simply behind us and nearly successful the races anyway. He has not had any unhealthy races all 12 months. He has simply pushed as Max has at all times pushed, which is completely and might’t fault him anyplace.”
“Distinctive,” mentioned Mercedes driver George Russell, who received the race underneath the lights of Sin Metropolis. “He had a dominant automotive at the beginning of the 12 months and obtained the wins when he wanted to after which most likely thought he wasn’t going to win the championship.
“After which he delivered week-in, week-out and obtained the consequence the automotive was able to and his rivals didn’t. I believed it was going to go proper to the wire and it didn’t.”
And Russell’s team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who fought a titanic scrap for the title with Verstappen in 2021, mentioned: “He has accomplished a implausible job, not made any errors and delivered each time and each level he’s alleged to. Actually blissful for him.”
Pink Bull workforce principal Christian Horner mentioned he believed this was the perfect of Verstappen’s 4 titles.
Verstappen felt 2023, when he and Pink Bull broke all of the information for probably the most dominant in F1 historical past, was “my greatest season”, including: “Final 12 months I had a dominant automotive however I at all times felt not everybody appreciated what we achieved as a workforce. After all the automotive was dominant however it wasn’t as dominant as folks thought it was.
“I’ll at all times look again at it as a result of, even when in locations we didn’t have the perfect set-up within the races, we had been nonetheless succesful to win races as a result of the automotive was fairly sturdy.
“However I’m additionally very happy with this season as a result of for many of it – I might say for 70% – we didn’t have the quickest automotive. However really we nonetheless prolonged our lead so that’s one thing I’m very happy with.”
That is the mark of the actually nice drivers, to out-perform their automotive, take it to locations it maybe doesn’t deserve, and accomplish that constantly, race after race, grinding out the outcomes when typically they don’t appear attainable.
Regardless of McLaren approaching sturdy, and intermittent challenges from each Ferrari and Mercedes, Verstappen remained laser-focused on what he wanted to realize.
“From Miami onwards,” he mentioned, “more often than not we weren’t the quickest any extra and that’s very early on within the season – 50-60 factors could be very simply overturned in the event you hold maximising factors and don’t do something loopy.
“I’ve skilled that myself in 2022. Something is feasible. I had that at all times behind my thoughts and centered on what I may management and gave it every thing each single weekend.”
