The plaudits poured in for Max Verstappen after he
clinched his fourth world title in the Las Vegas Grand Prix, as his rivals
queued up to pay tribute to a towering achievement from a driver recognised as
one of the all-time greats of Formula 1.
Every single one of Verstappens peers recognised this
performance for what it is - an almost flawless season from a driver who did
not have the best car for the majority of the season.
Lando Norris, who ran him closest, said: "Massive
congrats to him. He's deserved it. He has not put a foot wrong the whole year.
Thats a strength of his. He has no downsides, no negatives.
"When hes had the quickest car, he dominated races.
When hes not had the quickest car, he still been just behind us and almost
winning the races anyway. He has not had any bad races all year. He has just
driven as Max has always driven, which is perfectly and cant fault him
anywhere."
"Exceptional," said Mercedes driver George
Russell, who won the race under the lights of Sin City. "He had a dominant
car at the start of the year and got the wins when he needed to and then
probably thought he wasnt going to win the championship.
"And then he delivered week-in, week-out and got the
result the car was capable of and his rivals didnt. I thought it was going to
go right to the wire and it didnt."
And Russells team-mate Lewis Hamilton, who fought a titanic
scrap for the title with Verstappen in 2021, said: "He has done a
fantastic job, not made any mistakes and delivered every time and every point
he is supposed to. Really happy for him."
Red Bull team principal Christian Horner said he believed
this was the best of Verstappen's four titles.
Verstappen felt 2023, when he and Red Bull broke all the
records for the most dominant in F1 history, was "my best season",
adding: "Last year I had a dominant car but I always felt not everyone
appreciated what we achieved as a team. Of course the car was dominant but it
wasnt as dominant as people thought it was.
"I will always look back at it because, even if in
places we didnt have the best set-up in the races, we were still capable to
win races because the car was quite strong.
"But I am also very proud of this season because for
most of it - I would say for 70% - we didnt have the fastest car. But actually
we still extended our lead so that is something I am very proud of."
This is the mark of the truly great drivers, to out-perform
their car, take it to places it perhaps doesnt deserve, and do so
consistently, race after race, grinding out the results when sometimes they
dont seem possible.
Despite McLaren coming on strong, and intermittent
challenges from both Ferrari and Mercedes, Verstappen remained laser-focused on
what he needed to achieve.
"From Miami onwards," he said, "most of the
time we were not the quickest any more and that is very early on in the season
- 50-60 points can be very easily overturned if you keep maximising points and
dont do anything crazy.
"I have experienced that myself in 2022. Anything is
possible. I had that always in the back of my mind and focused on what I could
control and gave it everything every single weekend."
Raw race results don't tell full story
The raw statistics of race wins tell their own story of
Verstappen's performance. He won four of the first five races and seven of the
first 10. Then there was a five-month period - a run of 10 grands prix - when
he did not win at all.
When he finally broke that duck, it was with a drive that
will go down in history as one of the greatest of all time - in the pouring
rain of Sao Paulo, he won from 17th on the grid.
Yet even the raw race results dont tell the whole story of
the scale of Verstappen's achievement. For that, it is necessary to dig a
little deeper, into the raw pace of the cars of the two title contenders.
Over the season as a whole, the Red Bull, even now, is the
fastest car on average over one qualifying lap - by 0.078secs.
But that number is skewed by the size of Red Bulls
advantage at the start of the year.
Over the first four races, the Red Bull was on average
0.436secs quicker than the McLaren - and 0.265secs over the Ferrari, which was
then the second quickest car.
But take out those first four races, and McLaren are the
fastest by 0.006secs. And that number keeps going up the more of the
early-season races you take out of the calculation. To the extent that in the
second half of the season, the McLaren is faster on average by 0.124secs.
Despite the McLaren being a faster car on balance following
the Miami upgrade, Verstappen continued winning in Imola, Spain and Canada.
And despite that performance picture, over the season as a
whole, Verstappen still has a higher average qualifying position than Norris -
2.8 versus 3.4.
That's just the raw pace. Even more impressive was how
Verstappen nearly always maximised his results. It's hard to find a race when
he and Red Bull didn't get the best he could out of the car. Whereas Norris and
McLaren between them will admit that in Canada, Silverstone and Monza at least
better results were available than they achieved. And there were other races
where small margins made big differences in the result.
'Nobody is unbeatable' - who can stop Verstappen?
McLaren team principal Andrea Stella is a man who knows
something about domination, overachieving and the importance of consistency.
He was Michael Schumacher's race engineer at Ferrari when
the German won five consecutive titles.
He performed the same role for Fernando Alonso when the
Spaniard took the title battle to the wire in the fourth fastest car in 2012,
in one of the all-time great seasons, which had there been any sporting
justice, he would have ended as champion rather than Red Bull's Sebastian
Vettel.
And now he has had to watch Verstappen do the same to his
team.
"Four world championships in a row and this title
confirms Max is one of the best drivers in the history of F1," Stella
said. "And it is almost an important one for him because possibly in the
past, like last year, people might have thought it was easy to win races when
you have the best car. But it is never easy to win so consistently.
"There are always so many reasons why it can go wrong.
Already last year driver and team were operating at a very high level. But this
year, what he could extract from weekends when he didnt have the best material
confirms we are in the era of Max Verstappen and he deserves what he is
achieving."
Verstappen paid tribute to the efforts of Norris - while
also underlining the differences between their two seasons.
"We have a lot of incredible young talent in the sport
and Lando is definitely one of them and at times he made it very difficult for
me, he said. "We simply didnt have an answer in many races where they
were just clearly faster and that made it difficult.
"But to win a championship you have to be consistent
and sometimes you try to overperform. It doesnt happen every weekend,
sometimes you can. And thats what we did.
"McLaren at the moment are extremely strong. Lando, to
race a friend of yours for the title is always different. We have a lot of
respect for each other and I am sure we will have a lot of battles in the
future."
Verstappens four consecutive titles have come in very
different circumstances.
Against Lewis Hamilton, Verstappen fought tooth and nail
intensely all year and clinched it in that controversial finale in Abu
Dhabi when the race director rode roughshod through the rule book.
In 2022, he had to overcome Ferrari's fast start, and went
on to dominate the second part of the season, form which continued into 2023
and the start of this season, before drawing on all his skillset to maintain
the lead despite his car's performance advantage quickly turning into a
deficit.
Norris said: "Im very proud of the team for putting up
the fight for so long. For catching up as much as we did.
"We were the fourth best team at the beginning of the
season. We had too big of a deficit to catch up and we could not because they
have been too strong still."
And despite acknowledging Verstappen's quality, others also
feel they can take him on given the right car.
"Nobody is unbeatable," Russell said. "You go
through these phases where teams and drivers together are dominating and people
think: If I went up alongside them, I wouldnt be able to compete against
them.'
"But you have to believe in yourself. When I teamed up
with Lewis, Lewis is the greatest of all time and Max is right up there with
Lewis. So I also believe Max is beatable."
