The Dutch driver took the karting world by storm, winning national, international and world titles. Then, having reached the required age he moved into single-seaters for the 2014 season, contesting the FIA European Formula 3 Championship.
Against more experienced opposition Max won 10 races on his way to third place overall. He had, however, planned his next move long before the conclusion of his debut single-seater season and in August 2014, 16-year-old Max joined the Red Bull Junior Team and was announced as a 2015 race driver for Toro Rosso.
After three FP1 appearances in 2014 and a short winter testing programme, Max made his Grand Prix debut at the 2015 Australian Grand Prix, aged 17 years and 166 days – the youngest driver in the history of the sport. Two weeks after that he grabbed another record, becoming F1’s youngest points-scorer with seventh place in Malaysia.
A second season with Red Bull’s junior squad began in style with three points finishes from his first three races. The talent to challenge for bigger prizes was clear and after that year’s the Russian Grand Prix, Max was drafted into the Red Bull Racing line-up.
His impact was nothing short of spectacular. On his Team debut at the Spanish Grand Prix he qualified fourth and drove an immaculate race to claim his first F1 victory and became the sport’s youngest race winner – despite confessing he was not entirely sure what all the buttons on the steering wheel did.
Over the course of the following four seasons Max firmly established himself as a major star of the sport and as a regular race winner. And as the Team journeyed steadily back to sustained competitiveness, Max emerged as a genuine title contender.
In 2020 he finished third in the Drivers’ Championship, taking victories at the 70th Anniversary Grand Prix at Silverstone and the season finale in Abu Dhabi. The victories were supported by remarkable consistency, as he finished on the podium 11 times from the 12 races in which he saw the chequered flag.
With momentum building and with the bulk of the 2020 car carried over to the following year, the stage was set for Max to make his first serious bid for championship glory in 2021.
Across a hard-fought campaign Max took the fight to a dominant Mercedes team and wins in Imola, Monaco, Paul Ricard and Spielberg in Austria propelled the Dutchman into an intense battle with seven-time champion Lewis Hamilton.
After the summer break Max won the half-points Belgian Grand Prix and delighted his home crowd with a dominant win at Zandvoort as the Dutch Grand Prix returned for the first time since 1985. A brilliant US Grand Prix win in October was followed a week later by Max’s third Mexican Grand Prix in four years and he looked set to march to title glory.
Hamilton bounced back, however, with a trio of wins, in Brazil, Qatar and Saudi Arabia and an epic season went down to the wire at a nail-biting showdown in Abu Dhabi.
The battle was highly-charged but following a late safety car period Max closed in and overtook Hamilton on the last lap of the race to take the race lead, victory and the Drivers’ World Championship title.
If Max’s first title had been a case of ‘if’, his second crown ultimately became a tale of ‘when’, as Max found even greater levels of competitiveness at the wheel of the incredible RB18, the team’s first car for a new era of F1.
But while he ended the season as F1’s dominant force, Max didn’t have it all his own way. Early-season reliability issues put the defending champion on the back foot, but a resounding win at Imola steadied the ship and gave Max a platform from which to launch a truly stunning campaign.
In all, the Dutchman took an incredible 15 wins from the 23 rounds – a new single record for Formula One. He scored seven pole positions, won two of the season’s three Sprints and racked up five fastest laps. He took his second title at the Japanese Grand Prix, with four rounds in hand, and went on to set a new benchmark for most points scored in a single campaign with 454.
Max Verstappen is now firmly established as Formula One’s pre-eminent driver and with the Dutchman still finding more pace each year, there’s every reason to believe he’ll continue to rewrite the record books for years to come.
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