He has four wins to Hamilton’s three and leads him by 18 points in the world championship. This season he is making it count when it matters. He proved it repeatedly even when in a car that was outpaced by Hamilton’s Mercedes. I don’t need to over think or stress out about a lot of things to be quick.” I know what I have to do to be quick on a track. “I knew if I had a car capable of fighting for the title I would be up there and that is showing,” he says. What was considered arrogance by some in his youth is now calm, self-assurance. He is a man aware of the import of being in a title fight with the greatest driver of his generation, yet entirely unintimidated. He has grown up in public and while his features still betray his youth, his confidence and authority is unmistakable. The slight, awkward teenager that climbed into a Toro Rosso has long departed. Verstappen is in his seventh season in F1 having made his debut as its youngest driver, aged 17, in 2015. You should be able to be criticised and take criticism.” “You need to be hard on each other especially in tougher times or when you are not happy with certain things. “I cannot always be super-polite and nice that’s not how I work,” he explains. It has been crucial to the relationship he has with his team which now sees him locked in an almighty tussle for his first F1 title. This honesty and self-analysis goes beyond the empty rhetoric of the vainglorious. “That’s what I say to the team: ‘You can say the same to me, when I am a dickhead you can tell me.’ When I fuck up, I fuck up. That’s how I interact with the team,” he says with a gentle ease rather than the faint air of threat that so often accompanies such statements. “I am straight to the point, when I think it’s shit, it’s shit.
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