Max Verstappen

old man Alonso could be on for an interesting season

I think generally it’s surprising how technically poor a lot of the drivers are, or how uninterested they are in understanding the technical aspects of the cars. Having studied automotive engineering at University, I have a few friends/colleagues who have or do work in F1 in reasonably driver facing roles. From what I’ve been told:

- Seb was excellent at Red Bull for first of all making the whole team like him. He immersed himself in the culture of the team, would come into the factory regularly outside any official requirement to do so to speak to the guys in the design and manufacturing areas and would try and get an inside out understanding of the car. He was publicly reported as saying if he hadn’t been a racing driver he’d have liked to have done engineering. And I think that showed. A friend worked with him as test driver when he stood in for Webber a couple of times. My friend was the data engineer at the time and would usually print or screenshot data overlays for Webber to look at. Seb wanted to know how to use the data analysis software and asked some basic questions about how to zoom/crop data. My friend sat him at the computer and left him for 5mins to have a look through. When he came back, he’d worked out how to load all of Marks data and had added data channels/resized signals and had worked out himself where he was losing time. He went back out and promptly beat Webbers fastest time…

- Checo is apparently pretty clueless about car setup. If you give him a terrible car he can drive it faster than most people but he hasn’t got a clue how to improve it. However that helps at RedBull as the car doesn’t matter to him. The fact it’s so on its nose doesn’t even register with him. He just drives it as quick as he can and accepts whatever the team/max want the car to be. Clearly this works for them currently and I think arguably is probably why he’s good as a no.2 there. If what the other poster said about Daniel maybe also liking a similar setup to Max then that’s potentially why RB have brought him back in. Maybe they will give him a couple of tests and see how he compared to Checo in the knowledge he’s the only other driver who can live with a ‘max setup’.

Ultimately what racing in the usual junior series doesn’t do is educate the drivers outside the car. Driving in a spec series with big teams that know the cars inside out mean that technically poor drivers can still excel. Until they get to F1. I think thats potentially why see so many people who’ve been successful in F3 and F2 ultimately struggle when they get into an F1 car. You need far more than driving talent. Arguably I’d say that technical ability and technical feedback are how you win a championship which is why comments from stroll like ‘Just fix it’ tell me he’ll never be successful. The bloke has zero patience or understanding and wouldn’t know how to dissect what’s wrong about a car. If he can’t do that the car will never get better.

So with all that in mind…it’ll be interesting to see how Nick De Vries gets on. He’s actually had quite a bit of experience giving feedback to a team developing a car.

I remember reading before that some of the top drivers can be bad at developing the car because their adaptability means they drive around the problems, rather than flagging them up. I guess the ultimate F1 driver lineup would be a world class driver who is adaptable (Alonso, Hamilton, probably Max*) combined with a decent teammate who is outstanding at working out the issues with a car for development. Combine both of these in drivers who suit the type of driving needed in the regulations and you probably wouldn't do better.

• (This is not a dig at Max, I'm pretty certain he's a very adaptable driver but it's hard to say when he's been so good the car has always been designed around his desires and I don't think he's been in a terrible car either. Similar to Lewis, but he's had more rule changes and time in the sport that suggest it's more likely just due to time in the game).

From what I have seen and read, Max does not seem very adaptable. Remember early 2022, Sergio was as quick, then RB made the car more front-end pointy and Max was much quicker again?

Not being adaptable doesn’t matter if you’re good at developing a car or setup. In fact you’re far more likely to be successful if you do have the skills to develop a car into something that you can drive quick. An adaptable driver will get a lot out of a specific car, but they won’t make it quicker.

I think a good proportion of Schumacher’s success was less down to raw speed and more down to his ability to build a team and develop a car.

Agree. The event was very telling.

I'm no fan of Max and RBR aren't on my Christmas card list.

However, I hope that he strolls it this year. His driving, tenacity and downright cussedness over his F1 career deserves to be rewarded with a title that has no strings attached.

(Though some will surely try to attach a few).

I think thanks to overspendgate there will be a fair few who will not recognise any title of his as legitimate until we go through a complete rule / formula change again.