Why it’s crunch time for Verstappen

Max Verstappen stands at a fork in the road. One path leads to what he and many others who recognise a brilliant, irresistible talent regard as his manifest destiny of winning the world championship. Exactly what lies in the other direction - perhaps more wins but never the grand prize - is unclear, but Verstappen must turn away from the direction he's facing.

He's always been a lightning rod for criticism, but 2018 is the first time Verstappen has made a sustained run of errors that has blighted a campaign.

In Australia, frustration at being mugged by Kevin Magnussen at the first corner turned to impatience as he struggled to get back past. This led to a messy exit and running a kerb, picking up the floor damage that led to his later spin. In Bahrain he crashed in Q1 and then, in forcing Lewis Hamilton needlessly wide at the exit of Turn 1 after losing the corner, he hit the Mercedes and picked up terminal damage.

In China he threw away victory by going off while trying an impatient around-the-outside pass on Hamilton and then clattering into Sebastian Vettel. In Azerbaijan he hit Red Bull team-mate Daniel Ricciardo and later moved twice in the braking area - earning himself, according to the stewards, an equal share of blame in the team wiping itself out of the race. This cannot go on. That's why we need to talk about Max.

Verstappen has the air of belligerence that many, but not all, of the greats have. But he has been apologetic on two occasions this year - after hitting Vettel in China and the Baku collision. And he and Ricciardo also had to apologise to the entire Red Bull factory on Wednesday last week, a humbling experience. That's reflected in private too.

The Chinese GP, where his blunders were compounded by team-mate Ricciardo's win - a textbook example of how to stay on the tightrope between aggression and over-aggression - is understood to have had a profound impact on him. How could it not, given that it drew criticism from both Red Bull's Helmut Marko, who said he must not overdo it, and his father Jos, who urged his son to think more in battle?

"My dad is the hardest critic of everyone in the whole world, so if I can handle him, I can handle anyone," said Max before the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. "You're not perfect, nobody is perfect, you can always improve. I am very happy to listen and improve, like everyone else. The situation just makes you a better driver at the end of the day."

Verstappen's contrition was genuine, hard as that may be to believe when you saw how he drove in Baku. There, it wasn't just his trademark moving in the braking area that led to the crash, but his aggression towards Ricciardo throughout the race that led to the frustration growing. While Ricciardo had his stake in the incident, because the gap on the inside was never there and his usual good judgement in battle seemed clouded by his irritation with his team-mate, it was Verstappen who contributed the greater part to the situation.

Another key player in helping Verstappen through this tricky spell is Red Bull team principal Christian Horner. You can only imagine the frustration he felt. Who knows how many conversations they must have had after China about Verstappen's need to cut out the mistakes, only for him to overstep the line once more in Baku?

"Max's hunger and determination has hurt him this year, because each grand prix there's been an incident or a mistake" Christian Horner

"Ultimately, he will emerge from the other side of this," says Horner. "The most important thing is to learn from mistakes. The start of this season has been tough for him. In many cases it's looked like he's overeager. The other thing he benefits from, or will benefit from, is that his team-mate is a very polished and finished article and obviously at a different stage in his development. He can, and will, learn a lot of lessons from Daniel because, even after the incident in Azerbaijan, there is a respect between them. Daniel provides a very good and rounded benchmark there."

It's clear Red Bull sees the Verstappen/Ricciardo line-up as the ideal one for the team, hence the pressure it's applying to get the Australian to sign on the dotted line of a new deal that would keep him at Red Bull for next year and beyond. Ricciardo's ability to force the issue on track but not overreach (Baku excepted) is the template for Verstappen to learn from.

But why is Verstappen trying too hard? The most logical conclusion is that, in his fourth season in F1 and as a driver with three victories and 64 starts under his belt, he sees himself as ready for a world championship push. He certainly has the ability, but it's important to remember Verstappen is still only 20. Clearly, dealing with the reality that the Red Bull is generally fast enough to fight for victory in the races, but almost invariably starts with a track-position disadvantage, is a factor.

"Max's hunger and determination has hurt him this year, because each grand prix there's been an incident or a mistake," says Horner. "Some of the moves that he's pulled off, the first lap in China, are sensational. But for whatever reason the races haven't gone smoothly and haven't reached their potential. With Max, his raw ability is not in any doubt and he will learn from what's happened - and he needs to. It's a matter of closing the book on the first chapter, starting afresh now we've got to Europe and put it behind you."

The experience can't fail to change Verstappen. The question is whether it will change him enough for him to show patience at key moments in the intense pressure of battle. Out of the car, it's easy to accept that you have to play it cool sometimes and show better judgement. When you're flying towards a corner at breakneck speed with cars around you, that's when you have to rely on instinct and process decisions in split seconds. Some just don't have the temperament for it.

There's only so much that can be done to knock Verstappen into shape. It's down to him to take the problem seriously enough to take it onboard and not let his ego prevail, then to have the temperament to lock that more measured approach in his subconscious so that he processes these situations correctly in the heat of battle. You cannot teach this; you can only create the conditions to maximise the chances of it being learned. There's a risk it's a flaw that may never be defeated, but given Verstappen's age it is more likely that he will master it.

"The only person that can work it out is Max," agrees Horner. "We can all offer advice, feedback and guidance, but the only person that can ultimately come to those conclusions is Max himself. And he's smart enough to do that.

"He's been a lightning bolt from the moment he arrived in F1. He turns up at Red Bull and wins his first grand prix; he's driven some fantastic races. This year, he's got off to a bad start, so now it's a matter of a clean start, put it behind you, learn from those incidents, focus on where your strengths are and know that some days you are going to have to concede.

"I don't think anything specifically has changed in his life or in his approach, it's just that a sequence of events has happened and sometimes when you get into a spiral nothing goes right for you. You have to break the mould in order to change, and I think that you often see it go the other way - once you get right on the crest of a wave, everything falls perfectly for you. He's got enormous ability and he can go on to achieve fantastic things in this sport, but only if he learns from the experiences that he's gone through."

The point about his bad start permeating into four bad races is a very significant one. One of the cornerstones of a strong psychology for any elite sportsperson is the ability to put errors behind them and keep focused. If you make a mistake in one corner, you can't make up for it in the next. Instead, you need to keep your mind clear, and ensure you simply drive the next turn at 100%. By trying to go beyond 100%, seemingly to make up for an earlier error (be it a bad start, a qualifying frustration or a previous race), Verstappen is not driving the race in front of him. It's always dull when drivers talk about taking things 'step by step', but that is exactly what he has to do.

In Baku, for example, it's clear that having Ricciardo on his case got to Verstappen. He sees himself as Red Bull's lead driver, perhaps understandably so given he outperformed Ricciardo over the course of 2017. But his team-mate has once again raised his game. That's perhaps why what seemed to be the low point for Verstappen of China was extended to Azerbaijan. And it will have been compounded by a contract landscape that gives Ricciardo every reason to want to beat him.

Red Bull remains committed to allowing its drivers to race. While Verstappen's contract extension and the fact that Ricciardo is sniffing around other teams may suggest it's become Max's team, that's not what Red Bull intends. And understandably so, for while having a clear number one and number two in some ways makes life easier, it creates its own problems. The strongest team needs to have the strongest line-up. Provided the relationship between the two drivers does not become toxic - and even after Baku it's still good between Verstappen and Ricciardo - that puts the team in the strongest position.

There was a point when Verstappen was seemingly indulged by Red Bull. He's not being let off the hook now though.

"They've been very expensive lessons for him, so I'm confident that he will recognise where the lines are," says Horner. "Racing your team-mate is very different to racing other competitors. You get criticised if you let them race, you get criticised even more if you give them team orders. One of the essences of Red Bull is we don't have a number one or number two.

"They've been very expensive lessons for him, so I'm confident that he will recognise where the lines are" Christian Horner

"If you have a defined number one and number two you probably avoid some of the scenarios, such as what happened in Baku, but that's not the way that we go racing. We do not interfere in the way that the drivers race, other than that we request that they respect the team and respect each other, because they're representing every member of the team."

Red Bull has been here before. Verstappen's predecessor, Daniil Kvyat, fell apart mentally after a series of incidents culminating in Vettel branding him a "torpedo" after two collisions in three corners at the start of the 2016 Russian Grand Prix. Coincidentally, this played a part in Kvyat being relegated to Toro Rosso and Verstappen's promotion. The team sees that as a very different scenario, though.

Then there's Vettel, who had his fair share of incidents. He triggered the accident that put him and team-mate Mark Webber out of the Turkish GP in 2010 and later careered into Jenson Button at Spa, leading to McLaren team principal Martin Whitmarsh dubbing him the "crash kid". Vettel is perhaps the more relevant case study.

"They are different characters, different personalities," Horner says of Vettel and Verstappen. "They have to work it out for themselves and sometimes they've got to go through it in order to learn from it.

"With Sebastian, it was an evolution. There's no fast track to experience and he worked it out. He's far more rounded now than he was in the early days. He grew enormously through that time, from 2009 crashing into Robert Kubica in Australia, spinning off in the wet in Malaysia, crashing in Monaco. There were a lot of driver incidents that he learned from, and he applied that through the latter part of 2010, '11 and especially '12, when he was in a close fight with Fernando Alonso."

This is the hope - that having experienced the first four races of 2018, this is the moment when it all clicks for Verstappen. Most likely it will, as it usually does for top drivers. Lewis Hamilton, Vettel and Michael Schumacher all had their troubles earlier in their F1 careers and emerged from them to become three of grand prix racing's greatest drivers.

Whatever happens, there's a feeling that Verstappen's problems have built to critical mass and must either be controlled or they will destroy him. To become a world champion, you cannot just be a more extreme version of Pastor Maldonado.

"Maybe we'll look back on this one day, and maybe it'll be a defining moment," concludes Horner.

He's right, it will be. One way or another.