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 Verstappen’s 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. That’s a strength of his. He has no downsides, no negatives.
“When he’s had the quickest car, he dominated races. When he’s 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 can’t 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 wasn’t 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 didn’t. I thought it was going to go right to the wire and it didn’t.”
And Russell’s 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 wasn’t as dominant as people thought it was.
“I will always look back at it because, even if in places we didn’t 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 didn’t 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 doesn’t deserve, and do so consistently, race after race, grinding out the results when sometimes they don’t 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 don’t 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.”
