He\u2019s Max by name, and max by nature.<\/p>\n
Arriving as Formula 1\u2019s youngest ever competitor at just 17 years old, Verstappen pushed his car, his rivals and the sport\u2019s record books to the limit. The baby-faced Dutchman with the heart of a lion took the Toro Rosso \u2013 and then the Red Bull \u2013 by the horns with his instinctive racing style.<\/p>\n
F1\u2019s youngest points scorer soon became its youngest race winner \u2013 at the age of 18 years and 228 days \u2013 with an opportunistic but controlled drive on debut for Red Bull in Barcelona 2016. A true wheel-to-wheel racer, another stunning drive in Brazil from the back of the pack to the podium on a treacherous wet track kept the plaudits coming.<\/p>\n
Verstappen\u2019s no-holds-barred attitude and hard defending have sometimes landed him in hot water with his peers and paymasters. But the mistakes that initially marred his potential have given way to maturity, while the bravado and energy that make him a blockbuster talent have remained \u2013 and the victories have kept on coming.<\/p>\n
They led to his first F1 drivers\u2019 crown after that now legendary, final-round showdown with Lewis Hamilton in 2021 and he followed that up with a powerhouse title defence in 2022. An epic third successive championship triumph featured a record 19 wins from 23 Grands Prix, and he held on for a fourth in 2024, despite Red Bull falling off the pace towards the end of the campaign.<\/p>\n
The son of former F1 driver Jos Verstappen and super-quick karting Mum Sophie Kumpen, racing runs through his genes. Despite moving out of Dad\u2019s house to live in Monaco, Verstappen remains close to his family, and though he\u2019s not afraid to speak his mind, he can still be surprisingly shy.<\/p>\n
Having become the Netherlands’ first world champion aged just 24, the expectations for the new generation\u2019s leading light are sky high \u2013 but with Verstappen there\u2019s a feeling that the sky\u2019s the limit.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"He\u2019s Max by name, and max by nature. Arriving as Formula 1\u2019s youngest ever competitor at just 17…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":24697,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[441],"tags":[49,48,578,576,577,82],"class_list":["post-24696","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-formula-1","tag-ca","tag-canada","tag-f1","tag-formula-1","tag-formula1","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24696","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=24696"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/24696\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/24697"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=24696"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=24696"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=24696"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}