Reigning World Champion Max Verstappen is currently in the form of his life, to the extent that Alfa Romeo driver performance consultant Atze Kerkhof has hailed him as being unbeatable.
Nobody has come close to the Dutchman in almost two years, with him being on the verge of a third consecutive title.
2023 has seen Verstappen go to another level, despite having already reached new heights in 2022.
Last season, he claimed a record-breaking 15 wins on his way to a second consecutive championship.
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As things stand, he’s set to eclipse that record already.
After just 12 races, Verstappen already sits on 10 wins for the season with 10 races remaining, whilst he’s currently on an eight-race winning streak.
Victory at this weekend’s Dutch Grand Prix would see the 25-year-old match Sebastian Vettel’s record for nine wins in a row, dating back to 2013.
Verstappen is expected to not only match Vettel’s record, but to then eclipse it at the Italian Grand Prix.
Kerkhof views Verstappen as a “machine” in Mark Hughes’ ‘UNSTOPPABLE: The Ultimate Biography of Max Verstappen’, which is released on September 7.
“Max is as good as he is right now because of a brilliant natural gift and millions of hours of training. He’s only got better,” Kerkhof said in Hughes’ book, in an extract published by newspaper The Times.
“The rough edges have gone and now he’s like a machine. You cannot beat him.”
Hughes himself later adds that, “with Verstappen, it can look like faster reactions, but it’s not. He’s just feeling what the car is doing earlier through his neural pathways, which go direct to the brain, enabling him to respond earlier with the necessary inputs.”
2009 World Champion Jenson Button also views Verstappen as being able to do things which most drivers simply can’t, making him a dream driver for Red Bull.
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“Max is brilliant at getting the best from a car with an aerodynamic balance which the wind tunnel says is the best,” Button said.
“Most drivers find that balance horrible and adjust the car away from that to give them the confidence they need to commit to corners.
“But he can just drive it like that.”