Max Verstappen is already being spoken about as one of the motorsport greats, with the Dutchman now being a two-time world champion at only the age of 25.
This year Verstappen has been lightyears ahead of the competition, winning 14 races so far and adding consistency to his blistering pace, with the mistakes that could often be found in his racing in previous years seeming to disappear in 2022.
The Dutchman was known to push over his limits, losing the car or causing a collision, not knowing his own boundaries, but this is something Romain Grosjean believes he has cut out of his game.
“He’s still the Max that we love watching, and out there he’s always 100%, driving the wheels off his car, but he just manages to stay at 100% and not go over it a little bit,” he explained in a recent Sky Sports interview.
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“Since he became world champion he became more at peace, he drives he way he does which is a very engaged way of driving which I love and admire but now he just stays a little bit more within the limit than he would have done in the past.”
Verstappen had developed a reputation for pushing the car beyond its limits in his early F1 days, looking stunning when he pulled off a move that seemed impossible, but sometimes coming back to bite him with crashes and penalties.
The pair came together in Monaco back in Grosjean’s F1 days, with Verstappen trying an audacious overtake that never seemed on, ploughing into the wall at Turn 1 when he would have been better off biding his time for a more clear cut opportunity to pass the Frenchman.
“I think that’s a good summary of his situation,” said Grosjean when looking back on the incident.
“I think that Max would not do that now, obviously he got lucky because that was a big shunt for him, so that’s definitely something that he learned.
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“But it’s normal because you can get all the preparation that you want because when you get to Formula 1, it’s Formula 1, it’s harder than the rest, it’s different.”
The main difference between Lewis Hamilton and his rival Verstappen over the previous years was that you never felt that the British driver would ever make a mistake, while Verstappen was likely to DNF at some point or another.
However with this new ‘reigned in’ Verstappen, his levels of speed and consistency could see him go on to become one of the best of all time.