It hasn’t taken long for Max Verstappen’s place in the pantheon of driving greats to be weighed up.
His second championship has put him in rare air. He’s now won more titles than 17 of F1’s most iconic legends and is tied with legends like Fernando Alonso, Mika Häkkinen, Emerson Fittipaldi, Jim Clark, Graham Hill and Alberto Ascari.
Only 10 drivers have won more than two championships.
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But the title count is only one part of the picture. Making a qualitative assessment of greatness is far harder.
One Red Bull Racing man has had an attempt, and while he rates Verstappen on pure skill, he’s not yet close to being the perfect package.
Meanwhile, the FIA is stepping up its attempts to clean up the online public square, this week announcing it’s partnering with an artificial intelligence company to weed out trolls and toxic individuals from the sphere of motorsport discourse.
Abusive online behaviour is becoming a serious problem in all parts of the world, and motorsport’s governing body will be launching a campaign later this year to try to clear up its own patch.
VERSTAPPEN FASTER BUT VETTEL MORE COMPLETE
Max Verstappen is the most naturally gifted driver Red Bull Racing has ever fielded but is less complete a package than Sebastian Vettel, according to head of race engineering Guillaume Rocquelin.
Rocquelin identified Verstappen’s technical ability as a key weakness compared to Vettel, whose inquisitiveness and holistic approach to racing made him a more comprehensive title-winning prospect.
The French engineer, better known by his nickname ‘Rocky’, was Vettel’s race engineer between 2009 and 2014, navigating him to his four world championships.
He was promoted to the head of race engineering in 2015 before moving to a management role in the Red Bull driver academy earlier this year.
Speaking to the Les Fous du Volant podcast, Rocquelin said that Vettel arrived at Red Bull Racing in 2009 as a much more rounded driver, having modelled himself on the all-conquering Michael Schumacher.
“I think Sebastian was a more complete driver than Max when he arrived with us,” he said. “At the professional level, technique, mediation … he was trained at the Schumacher ‘school’, who was his idol.
“He asked a lot of questions, took a lot of notes, and when he arrived with us he was very thorough. It is no coincidence that he won several titles. He was more prepared technically, mentally.
“I think Max maybe had more natural talent, that’s what he relied on the most. But Sebastian was the most complete.”
Rocquelin said Verstappen was naturally faster and a bigger personality but still had weaknesses he needed to work on.
“Max has always been a boss,” he said. “He has enormous self-confidence, he knows what he wants and he is very direct.
“But I’ll be honest, Max is weak technically compared to other drivers we’ve worked with. I think he still has a lot of progress to make.
“He is a leader by his attitude, his results, but I think he can improve from a technical point of view and in the way of developing the car.”
ONLINE ABUSE ‘WILL DESTROY OUR SPORT’
The FIA will attempt to use artificial intelligence to crack down on abusive social media content, warning that failure to address anti-social behaviour could “destroy” motorsport.
Formula 1 has noted an uptick in toxic online behaviour in recent years. Former race director Michael Masi received death threats in the aftermath of last year’s Abu Dhabi Grand Prix as well as “racist, abusive vile” on social media. Threats were also made against his family.
Last month Silvia Bellot, one of the stewards at the United States Grand Prix, also reported receiving death threats after being part of the panel that penalised Fernando Alonso for driving with a damaged car.
“It is utterly deplorable that a volunteer such as Silvia or any of our marshals and officials, who volunteer their time to allow us to go racing, is the subject of such hatred,” FIA president Mohammed Ben Sulayem wrote in an open letter published by Autosport. “Indeed a number of FIA staff have also been targeted with harassment and hate posts over the past few years.
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“It is totally unacceptable that our volunteers, officials and employees are subjected to this extreme abuse. It has no place in our sport. It has a devastating effect on our mental health and that of our loved ones.
“Let me be clear: without these people there would be no racing.
“We have to ask ourselves: who would want to pursue becoming a top official in this environment? The reality is obvious: if this continues it will destroy our sport.”
Several drivers have also spoken out about the amount of abuse they receive online, with both Max Verstappen and Lewis Hamilton calling for action as recently as last week to improve the civility of debate.
Ben Sulayem said that the FIA had engaged social media platforms to try to spur collective action and is partnering with artificial intelligence company Arwen to weed its channel clean of abusive actors.
The FIA is also commissioning research into “digital hate and toxic commentary specific to sport”.
A campaign to clean up online debate, which the FIA is calling the Drive it Out initiative, will be launched in coming months.
ALBON DOING ‘BETTER THAN I EXPECTED’ AFTER 2020 CONFIDENCE HIT
Alex Albon has admitted that he lost confidence in his abilities at the end of his ill-fated 2020 season at Red Bull Racing but that his Williams campaign has been able to restore some of his self-belief.
Albon enjoyed a rapid rise in Formula 1 followed by a sharp and demoralising fall. He was unexpectedly called up to Toro Rosso in 2019 after extricating himself from a Formula E contract, and halfway through the year he replaced Pierre Gasly at Red Bull Racing as the Frenchman faltered alongside Max Verstappen.
But the Thai driver’s full year alongside the Dutchman was unimpressive, and he was dropped at the end of the season having scored only two solitary third-place finishes.
Red Bull kept him on the books as a reserve driver and fielded him in the German DTM series before facilitating a move to Williams this year, but Albon said his self-belief had been shot by his tumultuous two seasons on the grid.
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“It was something which I kind of lost a little bit towards the end of that 2020 season,” he said, per RaceFans. “When you’re driving a DTM car, it’s a completely different thing. You can’t really gauge where you’re at.
“Now I really do feel like I’m driving well, and a lot of that is down to confidence in the car, and that again is something which I feel like I’ve ticked.
“I do feel like I’ve done a good job this year and I feel like I proved to myself what I know I can do.”
“Of course I still want to push on and still do good results and impress and show the team what I can do, but for this year, having had the year out and all things considered, I feel like it’s been a positive year.
“I feel like this has maybe even gone better than I expected it to.”
Albon is 19th in the standings with four points after three top-10 finishes.
