Max Verstappen, the defending Formula 1 World Champion, has played down rumours that his Red Bull RB19 was built to favour his driving style.
The 26-year-old Dutchman was crowned as Drivers' Champion for a third consecutive year in 2023, driving for the Milton Keynes-based Oracle Red Bull Racing outfit.
While Red Bull dominated the 2023 F1 Championship with over double the points of nearest rivals Mercedes and Ferrari, the gulf between Verstappen and teammate Sergio Perez was equally as wide.
Verstappen claimed a record-breaking 19 wins out of a possible 22, including ten on the bounce from the Miami Grand Prix to the Italian Grand Prix. Meanwhile, Perez could only claim victory in two events, leading many to believe the RB19 was more suited to the Dutchman's driving style.
But Verstappen has rubbished these claims, stating that he just drives whatever car is given to him.
Speaking to Motorsport.com, the defending Champion said: "When people ask you: ‘What is your driving style?’, I can’t tell you because it’s about being able to adapt to certain situations or what the car likes as well."
"What do I want? I want more grip. There’s a lot of things that you want, some things are not realistic. So, I just adapt to the car that I get given," he insisted.
Verstappen went on to reiterate that the engineers back at the factory don't necessarily setup the car to favour one driver or the other.
He continued: "Throughout the year, the team just applies upgrades to the car to make it faster. Not to try and follow a certain balance direction or whatever.
"It’s just overall load, overall grip, that you gain from upgrades. I’m quite happy with the behaviour of the car, but if the car is a little bit more understeery I have to adapt my driving to that. Or if it’s more oversteer it’s the same way.
"I think it’s been quite okay. Some races anyway you have more oversteer or more understeer. It’s very up and down in terms of balance, it’s not always on the nose. Some tracks you cannot run it like that," Verstappen maintained.
A history of dominating teammates
There is no denying that Verstappen is one of the greatest drivers the sport of F1 has ever had. He has a history of beating teammates and making them look like amateurs in comparison.
His mastery behind the wheel has directly resulted in the demotion or outright sacking of numerous drivers; take Daniil Kvyat in 2016, Pierre Gasly in 2019 and Alexander Albon in 2020 as examples.
Albon recently gave valuable insight into what it's like to be Verstappen's teammate, inferring that Red Bull cars are in fact inherently designed to play well with the Dutch driver's inputs behind the wheel.
Despite holding on longer, there is a certain expectation that Perez will suffer a similar fate as those before him. With his contract expiring at the end of 2024, will the higher-ups at Red Bull look elsewhere for a more formidable and evenly-matched teammate for Verstappen?
More importantly, who can Red Bull place in the other car and hope that he can get closer to Verstappen?
With yet another season of Red Bull dominance on the cards for the upcoming 2024 campaign, fans are at least hoping for a closer battle between Verstappen and Perez for the Drivers' Championship.
But will the as yet unreleased RB20 allow for a fair fight between teammates, or will Perez be unable to extract the maximum out of his machinery, as he struggled to do so last year? Or is Verstappen simply that much better than the Mexican?
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