The hurdles that threatened young Verstappen's irrepressible rise

September 2013. Pembrey. The Welsh rain is not letting up as a Belgo-Dutch kid, just short of his 16th birthday, prepares to go out for his first-ever run in a racing car. Apart from his nervous dad, the only spectators are the soggy sheep in the nearby fields. Is it worth risking it?

“He didn’t want to let him out, but I said, ‘Just go out and drive’,” relates Tony Shaw, who along with wife Sarah Shaw ran the ‘Manor’ half of the Manor MP Motorsport Formula Renault 2.0 team with which karting superstar Max Verstappen was about to get his first taste of a single-seater. ‘He’ was Dutch racing legend Jos Verstappen, who since his own retirement from the cockpit had devoted his life to preparing his son for what he was convinced would be Formula 1 superstardom.

It was 12 years since Shaw, then working as an engineer for the previous incarnation of Manor (run by future F1 team boss John Booth), had been on hand for the first test in a car – also a Renault 2.0 – of a karting sensation by the name of Lewis Hamilton.

“There aren’t many top-line karters like them who you get to see first time in a car,” continues Shaw. “Lewis ran at Mallory Park – he was pretty attacking I have to say, and shunted it! But he took to it easily and Max did as well. Sarah and I were stood there at Pembrey next to Jos. Max did his out-lap and the next time through we thought, ‘F*** me – that’s unbelievable!’ We had to turn to Jos and ask if it was really Max’s first time in a car. Jos was really nervous, pacing up and down, which is something you don’t expect from Jos Verstappen.”

Nervous, perhaps. Highly strung, more likely. Back in 2016, when this author wrote the second of two articles about Verstappen’s formative years for Autosport sister title F1 Racing (now GP Racing), George Russell, his former karting team-mate, reported: “Jos was hard on him – he wouldn’t take second for an answer! You’d think, ‘Bloody hell, that’s a bit harsh’, but it’s definitely more than half the reason he’s the driver he is today.”

And the racecraft that would become famed in F1 was already on display. Russell remembered a KF2 race in 2013: “He was very aggressive – never really took any shit. I wouldn’t say he was unbelievably fast to put it on pole – to be fair, in karting that doesn’t really make much difference – but he’d win more often than not. He was really good in the rain. I remember at Sarno, he was leading, I was second and Esteban Ocon was third. He spun off pushing too hard and still came back to second – you always knew he was properly on the limit.”

Max Verstappen's first outing in a racing car came at a soggy Pembrey in 2013 and his talent was immediately clear

Photo by: Frits van Eldik

With a mother – Sophie Kumpen – who was also an excellent karter, it was inevitable that Verstappen would want to compete. The parents were reluctant but, with Max aged four and Jos away competing in F1, his mum made the mistake of taking him along to Genk kart track to meet up with the Pex family. Richard Pex had been a friend of Jos’s since their karting days together, and his younger son Stan was buzzing around – aged three – on a CRG Puffo kart.

“Max was not allowed to drive,” said Pex Sr. “But he was one year older than Stan and he was getting a little bit angry! Jos had said he would have to wait until he was six or seven. Max’s mother called Jos and said Max really wanted to drive, so he said, ‘OK, let him do a few laps’. Jos had lost…”

The older of the Pex brothers, Jorrit, was four years Max’s senior, and they would do a lot of running together, crucial in Max’s development as a driver. Jos, meanwhile, would tune engines used successfully by Max and the Pex boys. Jos and Sophie split and, while Max lived with his mother, the karting – as with Hamilton and Jenson Button in similar situations – was also dad-and-lad bonding time. The Verstappens would holiday with the Pexes, and travel over Europe for karting.

"Jos had already invested so much money into the karting career of Max that he was more or less out of it. Raymond had some money but didn’t want to invest. I was trying to talk to potential sponsors but they said no. We couldn’t find anything" Frits van Amersfoort

Jos told this writer: “I did about 400,000 kilometres in a Mercedes van, with Max sleeping in the back – hard work but a very nice time! It was normal for Max to do it – he really had to. He was asking for it himself. He was four and a half years old and at that age you just go to the track, start the engine and do some laps. But you can see from the age of six that they start to develop driving skills. Max was always the fastest driver on the track, keeping up with drivers three or four years older than him.”

Following the Manor MP test in 2013, Verstappen had outings with KTR at Hockenheim and Barcelona, and Josef Kaufmann Racing at Spa, plus another run with Manor MP at Jerez, convincing everyone of his talent.

“We as a team were mad keen to get him for 2014,” says Shaw. “We were bending over backwards to have him in the car. He was receptive, a really easy kid to work with. But they were reasoning that he didn’t need to go Formula Renault – the problem is you could get lost in it if you weren’t in the right team. It could just be down to sourcing the right engines.”

The Verstappens therefore went to Valencia for a tryout with top German Formula 3 team Motopark. While the FIA’s F3 European Championship was switching to a new engine formula for 2014, the German series was continuing with the older hardware. Max’s performance with Motopark was astonishing. Clearly the level of Verstappen Jr’s talent meant that a year in European F3 would be preferable to the German series, and that’s when Van Amersfoort Racing re-entered the family’s history.

Jos Verstappen had an integral part in steering the career of his son

Photo by: XPB Images

With VAR, Verstappen Sr had won the 1992 Benelux Opel Lotus series in his rookie season of car racing, managed and mentored by team boss Frits van Amersfoort’s long-time friend, ex-F1 racer Huub Rothengatter. Rothengatter, increasingly struggling with his hearing, brought Raymond Vermeulen on board during the 1990s to manage Jos, and would be instrumental in pulling together Max’s deal with VAR.

“Jos had already invested so much money into the karting career of Max that he was more or less out of it,” explains van Amersfoort. “Raymond had some money but didn’t want to invest. I was trying to talk to potential sponsors but they said no. We couldn’t find anything. We had no money to buy a car for Max, let alone for the season. Huub said, ‘F*** it, if no one will do it I’ll buy the car and pay for the first part of the season.’”

In the meantime, in January the Verstappens headed out to the States for the Florida Winter Series. This, using newly obsolete Formula Abarth machines, was a new initiative of the Ferrari Driver Academy, whose eye-wateringly wealthy young Canadian Lance Stroll was about to step into cars in the new Italian Formula 4 Championship – in which the FDA was also instrumental – with Prema Powerteam. Four FWS events were run, effectively as private race meetings operated by Prema and its staff. Among the other drivers were Stroll’s FDA seniors Raffaele Marciello and Antonio Fuoco, plus Nicholas Latifi.

One of the keystones of Prema’s success over the past decade has been the Winway coaching and management company run by ex-racers Nuno Pinto and Pieter Belmans. Pinto was coaching in Florida, and is still on hand for Stroll in F1 today.

“We did a small test at Homestead,” laughs Pinto. “And exiting the pits Max crashed into Fuoco who was stopped at the red light! He said he was looking at his dashboard.”

Verstappen got no running… which made his performance in testing for the opening round at Sebring all the more remarkable.

“It’s a very difficult track, and it was raining,” continues Pinto. “He was several seconds faster than the next guy. In the last corner he was completely sideways, and over the radio I asked them to call him in because he was risking too much. Max looked at me and said, ‘No, everything is under control’. I said, ‘Man, I saw opposite lock, totally sideways’, and he said, ‘My way since the beginning is to push as hard as I can to find the limit’. He never crashed…”

The young Verstappen was adept at gearbox assembly in the Florida Winter Series

Photo by: Ferrari

That was until the races, and Pinto has an interesting explanation: “His limits were different to other people’s. He’d arrive at the braking point and everyone was braking earlier. He also had a lot of crashes with Fuoco because they had a history from karting of not giving one inch to each other.”

Verstappen won two of the 12 races, and Pinto found that “Jos had influence and was always giving advice, but he let Max work with us a lot. He really gave us [Pinto and then-FDA chief Luca Baldisserri] the opportunity to teach him. We also had classes – they had to disassemble a gearbox and put it back together, and he was super-good at that.”

"There was a lot of trouble between us and particularly Jos. It was really desperate and he wanted to leave"Frits van Amersfoort

Pinto, Baldisserri and Prema even discussed getting Verstappen into the FDA and the Prema F3 line-up for 2014. But with Fuoco and Lotus F1 Junior Ocon (the eventual champion) already on board it was decided that “the risk of them being too competitive against each other could ruin our hopes”.

At VAR, the season started well. Verstappen won in the second round at Hockenheim, but difficulties were emerging.

“Huub, Jos and Raymond had a big fight,” says van Amersfoort. “It was three older guys making war about how much percentage of future income of Max they will have. Huub is an emotional character, let’s be honest, but in the end he did it [produced the money for Max].”

After the fourth round at the Hungaroring, where Verstappen had a difficult weekend, there was a real risk of a split in the camp. Then VAR took him testing at Monza in low-downforce configuration, and he responded by winning the next six races on the trot: three at Spa, three at Norisring.

“There was a lot of trouble between us and particularly Jos,” remembers van Amersfoort. “It was really desperate and he wanted to leave. But we had a two-day private test at Monza, and the lucky thing was Jos was away getting married in Curacao! We had Max one to one, and those two days went really well. That was kind of our breakthrough, and our relationship was more or less up to 100% again.”

Verstappen's graduation from karting direct to F3 in 2014 raised eyebrows, but he immediately impressed

Photo by: XPB Images

Now Mercedes and Red Bull were sniffing around. In early August, Verstappen Sr even gave this author a tasty hint for Autosport of something that was only a couple of weeks from being revealed – Max’s announcement as Toro Rosso race driver for 2015.

“The [F1] train only comes once,” he said. “I think it’s good for Max to throw him into the deep and let him climb out – he learns so fast. The important thing is that he develops himself very well, and he has adapted impressively to the issues he’s had this year. He’s very mature, with very good overtaking; he’s in control.

“I don’t want to play games, especially as this world is so bloody small I know they [Red Bull and Mercedes] are even speaking with each other! I have a good feeling with both parties but the important thing is what’s best for Max, but I’m having a lot of sleepless nights and I’m very scared to do the wrong thing.”

Credit to Verstappen Jr. His elevation to F1 changed his demeanour in the F3 paddock not a jot. He remained popular and friendly with other drivers and media, even with his attentions split between the completion of his F3 programme and his F1 blooding with Toro Rosso: a first test at Adria, then FP1 duties in Japan, the US and Brazil. His F3 career finished with the Macau Grand Prix. He didn’t need to win it – he already had an F1 graduation sorted, after all – but he was determined to do so.

“In qualifying Max was slow, and there was a fight [over set-up] between Rik [Vernooij, VAR engineer] and Jos,” says van Amersfoort. “Rik persisted, and Max persisted over the radio to leave the car as it was, and in the end he qualified third.”

The history books will show that Verstappen hit the barriers in the qualification race while running second, ahead of eventual GP winner Felix Rosenqvist, and that from 24th on the grid he charged through to seventh in the final. And off to F1 with Toro Rosso.

For 2015 he was alongside Carlos Sainz Jr – another son of a famous national hero. The relationship with Sainz was edgy, but Verstappen scored points second time out in Malaysia (for seventh) after qualifying a superb sixth.

Ocon won the 2014 F3 Euroseries title, but it was Verstappen who graduated directly to F1 for 2015

Photo by: XPB Images

His best result was fourth in Hungary and the US. Toro Rosso then switched from Renault to Ferrari power, and 2016 started with fifth on the grid in Australia. With Daniil Kvyat underperforming in the senior Red Bull team, Verstappen was parachuted in alongside Daniel Ricciardo in time for the Spanish GP. The rest is history…

“For our entire team, Max was very rewarding,” said Verstappen’s Toro Rosso race engineer Xevi Pujolar in a recent interview with Gazzetta dello Sport. “He motivated us, and even though we had to work hard, we had a lot of fun. The people in the pit lived the relationship with this boy with great intensity and great satisfaction. Right from the start we thought that he would join Red Bull in a short time, and that sooner or later he would win the world championship.”

“I had breakfast in Hungary with Jos and Raymond last year,” says Pinto, “and we were laughing about how long ago the Florida Winter Series was. Max is still super-nice – the same guy as he’s always been. I see him driving the same way – the same approach as he always had: maximum attack and very hard as a fighter. He’s matured – I’ve now seen him settling for places. That’s a big part of the learning.”

Verstappen made his F1 test bow at the end of 2014, just one year after he'd sampled a racing car for the very first time

Photo by: Sutton Images