One thing that is well known about Max Verstappen is his genuine love for all categories of motorsport, as seen in the sim-racing and GT3 ventures he’s done in the past.
James Hinchcliffe highlighted Verstappen’s personality as a ‘great example’ of a driver whose mannerisms differ when they are on track to when they are behind closed doors.
The four-time world champion often gets a lot of stick for his aggressive driving style, and some of the incidents he has been at the centre of on-track in the past.
Verstappen himself noted the steps he has to take with himself to be able to solve external issues internally. He’s found that this has helped in the midst of intense title battles, such as the one last season with Lando Norris.
Chris Harris says Max Verstappen is an ‘uncomplicated’ man who happens to be incredibly talented
Chris Harris took to The Car Podcast to share what he had learned about Verstappen during the filming of a promotional video for Ford. Harris noted the media coverage that the Red Bull driver gets in the UK, and cross-referenced it with his own experience with the Dutchman during the day spent filming with him.
“The thing you need to know about Max Verstappen is that most people in the UK have got him wrong, and that’s why I suppose I’m not proud of the film, but I think we’ve not done a job in repositioning how people think about him.
“That would be too cynical. What we’ve done is we’ve let you see who he is. And frankly, he’s one of us. He’s a very, very uncomplicated man who happens to have been born with a set of skills to drive a racing car in a manner that none of us can really understand.
“And even more bizarrely, he’s actually aware of his talent, and he’s able to express what he’s doing.
Chris Harris shares a similar sentiment to Jos Verstappen regarding UK F1 fans
Jos Verstappen shared a similar opinion on F1 fans’ opinion of his son, Max, ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix at the beginning of August, stating that they see him as a ‘jerk’, which is not the Max that he knows.
Harris went on to double down on his evaluation of the younger Verstappen, continuing, “I think it also reminded me that when people have judged Max.
“He deserved to be judged at times, and some of it was close to the bone at the beginning, but we forget two things: he was so young, and he was so inexperienced.
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“He hadn’t come up; he hadn’t graduated through years and years of racing. I’m not sure he really knew a lot of what you could and couldn’t do in armed combat in a car.
“He was just given a Formula 1 car at an age where most people are trying to do their GCSEs and told to go out and fight.
“You forget, and he’s effectively matured into young adulthood as a world champion in the full view of a very, very critical media.”