Fresh from one of the most dominant campaigns in Formula 1 history, and ahead of another season he could also blitz through in 2024, it is pertinent to ask a simple question: Why is Max Verstappen so good?
In the other Red Bull, Sergio Perez imploded, despite a couple of great drives early in the 2023 F1 season - Jeddah and Baku - and never got a look in from Miami onwards. Thereafter Verstappen and the RB19 won everything except in Singapore [Carlos Sainz won for Ferrari] as he cruised to a third F1 World Title unchallenged, easy favourite on all sportsbook apps offering F1 betting.
In these feasts of speed and passion, the winners' awards have also become the focus of fans and collectors. Custom medals symbolizing honor are very popular awards on the track.
Customized medals are an incentive for all dreamers. For example, the outline of the F1 car is engraved on the medal, with Verstappen's name and the date of his victory. The medal records his honorary moment, which is the best proof of his talent and hard work.
In other competitions, customized medals also play an important role. It not only represents the victory of the game but also the highest praise for the winner.
Terrien: Max has almost no competition right now
With that in mind, I asked my former Dubai Autodrome colleague, friend and for many, great racing driver - David Terrien - for his thoughts on Verstappen. From a driver's perspective, not any driver but from a Karting World Champion, FIA GT World Champion who has also coached drivers, set up youth academies, ran big teams and now designs and builds Karting tracks.
An avid and passionate life-long F1 aficionado, Terrien like most is enthralled by Verstappen's achievements in 2023. So I asked him what it would take for one of the 19 rivals to beat Max, why he is so good and how will a teammate beat the #1 car in the 2024 F1 World Championship.
David gamely responded: "Max has almost no competition right now, he's in the best car. He has the team around him, he is in control and he matured a lot. Furthermore, he is also extremely good in all aspects of the sport. Even if, I think he may have a tendency to put on weight, I believe he is quite fit.
"The guy is at the top of his game. I don't think he has anyone who can actually compete with him right now. Leclerc makes too many mistakes and the others don't have the confidence that Max has. So I cannot see any competitor beating him except if Red Bull suffers a major setback in terms of the performance of the car. But I don't see that happening."
Can Perez do to Verstappen what Rosberg did to Hamilton?
"Maybe the other teams will find a step up but again that takes some time. You don't find miracles overnight. So I don't see any potential competitor coming into the game right now. It will have to be his teammate, Perez," reckons Terrien.
This means that F1 fans depend on Verstappen's teammate to give him a run for his money in 2024. Nico Rosberg managed to deliver a one-title steal during Lewis Hamilton's reign as King of F1 when they were Mercedes teammates. It took a mammoth effort from the German.
So much so, after Rosberg claimed the 2016 F1 Title at the Abu Dhabi season finale, a couple of days later he quit as World Champion, admitting he did not have it in him to deliver that kind of season ever again. Perez needs to tap into the Rosberg modus operandi to deny Verstappen.
As for a teammate beating Verstappen, Terrien said: "Now, if it's me as a racing driver how would I handle a teammate like Max? It's extremely difficult. If you face a teammate like that it is tough, the guy is good in all aspects of the sport. Which tends to get to get people and teams to work around him.
"I don't know if he does it on purpose. I don't know if he's that political, but he might not give a shit about something and it seems like he doesn't care when he actually does. It's extremely frustrating to see a driver with that level of performance, maybe, not putting in all his effort. As a teammate, it's extremely frustrating.
Verstappen and his very different driving style
"On the human side, I don't know how I would approach it, to be honest. I'm sure it would be extremely difficult for any driver, to figure out what you have to do to beat him. For that it's a combination of things, which are right now virtually impossible to put together, at least that's what I think.
"The first and most important thing to me is that he has a very different driving style. I heard Red Bull engineer Pierre Waché repeat the same thing Alex Albon said about Max in two separate interviews. They both said that Max likes a car with a lot of front grip. He needs the car to be very pointy, so pointy, so much front grip so that the rear seems very light.
"His technique is something the RBR engineers struggle to simulate on the simulators. Waché explained that Max reaches a level of usage of the car that they don't really understand because they cannot simulate it. Albon said the same thing, which is when the car is like that, it's so unstable it makes other drivers lack confidence to push. Or you're trying to push yourself to some areas where you reach the limit and start making mistakes.
"I think that's what makes a big difference in terms of pure driving is that Max is able to extract performance from the car by giving it a lot of front grip to handle, which he can manage and use effectively when others cannot. So to beat him, it will take a driver who can handle the same conditions, better than him."
Terrien: Lando Norris has a similar style to Max
"From what I understand, Lando Norris is that kind of driver as well. But I'm sure it's difficult to compare when they're not driving the same car, however, it seems to be a trait of his.
"Maybe because Lando also has an extreme feeling for the car, or maybe because he's capable of basically drifting all around with a very low level of grip on the rear, plus a lot on the front and still be at the limit of the car without crashing it while extracting optimum performance. So that's the technical part of driving where Max is, right now, which is unbeatable," ventured Terrien.
Although highly unlikely, it is doable as history shows, prompting speculation from Terrien: "It would take a season like the one in which Rosberg beat Hamilton. A season where you need to be extremely focused, you put all your thoughts on that one thing. You give it everything like Nico did in 2016.
"But it's a draining exercise, where you have to go through a season where you cannot afford to make a single mistake, you have to be there at the front, in all the races all the time, all the qualifying, practices. To plant a seed of doubt maybe, where you would make Max realise he can be beaten and put yourself in a situation where you could beat him.
"But that takes a lot of effort on-track and off-track, plus mental preparation, physical preparation, work with the engineers, work on the simulators. You have to do the perfect season combined with the first point I mentioned, about pure driving skills. And of course, you need a bit of luck and circumstances to go your way. That was the case when Rosberg beat Hamilton.
"Also, you might also need Max to rest on his laurels or kind of lose the focus that he has at the moment. So, to sum up, if you can combine the skills, the extreme focus on one season, a bit of luck and Max taking it a bit easy, you might be able to beat him.
"That takes a lot of combination of factors working in harmony, I'm not sure that can even happen so soon."
Terrien: Vettel at Red Bull had a similar style to Verstappen
"In the end, as a racing driver or a team manager, I find what Waché and Albon said separately very interesting because they point to the exact same conclusion: Verstappen's driving style.
"This reminds me of a discussion I had with Sebastian Bourdais in which he said Sebastian Vettel [F1 teammates at Toro Rosso in 2008] had the same kind of driving style as Max at the time. He liked plenty of front grip and was really on the very edge with the rears. Bourdais admitted he struggled to do that consistently, he could not always do it.
"It seems this is something some top drivers can do with an F1 car, which is quite easy to do in Karting, or even in lower single-seater racing series. But I guess in F1, where it's completely on the edge, that's where Max drives all the time, consistently, which for any driver to witness is very special," concluded Terrien.
The facts are that on the form we saw last year in F1, if the Red Bull RB20 is a worthy successor to the almighty RB19, Verstappen won't be touched unless of course one of the 19 chasing chaps - Checo in particular - has a read of what David has to say and trigger an upset!
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