Marko: Verstappen wants to win all the time

In a recent interview with the official F1 website, Marko explained how he identified Verstappen's prodigious talent by witnessing him in Formula 3 and decided to convince Red Bull to invest in the youngster and did so by signing him for a Toro Rosso drive that would lead to the youngster becoming the youngest ever Grand Prix driver.

Marko recalled how he called Jos Verstappen, Max's father, with the offer, “I said: We do something different – we go to Formula 1.

"There was silence. Jos? Jos? Jos? More silence! He couldn’t believe it. Two or three days later we had a meeting in Graz, where we worked out how we were going to do it. And pretty soon we signed a contract.”

The Red Bull programme has more often than not been a ruthless endeavour for young hopeful drivers, many have tried to make it through that route, few have succeeded but those who have include the likes of Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo and of course, now, Verstappen.

Marko, who heads the Red Bull driver programme, recalled how young Max was a different prospect to his peers at the time, “I had an hour-and-a-half conversation with him.

"Normally, drivers are in for 30 minutes or so, but this was a very long and good conversation. He was a mature human being in a very young body. Normally, older drivers still aren't mature enough.

“It was not only about motor racing, he knew all the important things. One of his sponsors is Jumbo, which is a big supermarket chain, and he knew all about the company and the figures.

"It was impressive. Some drivers, they don’t know where Croatia is, for example!”

Marko also recollected watching Verstappen in action during the F3 street race at tricky Norisring in the wet, "He was two seconds faster than anybody else. His car control was just unbelievable. It was dramatically different to anything I had seen before.”

The Austrian then lobbied Red Bull to have the young prodigy included in the team and history now shows that at 17 years of age Max became the youngest F1 driver of all time and a host of other 'youngest' records have tumbled since then and now bear his name.

At the start of last year, although the pace was always there, Verstappen hit a poor patch in terms of mistakes which triggered widespread criticism. But despite this, he overcame circumstances that might have downed lesser drivers - Pierre Gasly springs to mind - and simply upped his game and got rid of the errors.

Marko continued, "He has an absolute will to win. He wants to win, all the time. That was a bit of a problem in the beginning because he was always pushing, even in every practice session. Last year in Monaco, we had the downside of this approach in P3, when he crashed and lost the chance to win."

"He learned the hard way. He realised that he had a car that was capable of winning and through a stupid mistake everything was gone. He learned to be patient.”

Needless to say, managing a prodigy of this stature on the biggest stage in motorsport is no easy task as Marko explained, "Sometimes it’s difficult, but in the end, he listens. You have to put across an argument, and the argument has to be justifiable. But he’s also very stubborn. If he has an idea in his head, it’s difficult to move him around.

"That can be a strength, as long as it’s going in a positive direction. If you can present a good argument, he’s strong enough to agree: Yes I was wrong. He won’t say it straight away, but he will say it!" added the Red Bull driver boss.

https://www.grandprix247.com/2019/07/06/horner-it-was-markos-idea-to-offer-15-year-old-max-a-f1-drive/