Why Verstappen is shooting for a Hamilton title fight

It's tough being a PSV Eindhoven fan. Having won last year's Eredivisie - the highest division of Dutch football - this season the team has waned in comparison with the Amsterdam-based Ajax squad, which has a youthful group of players that defied the odds and took on the best Europe has to offer in the Champions League.

You could say Red Bull occupies a similar position to PSV in Formula 1; once utterly dominant, now reduced to bystander status as others - namely Mercedes and Ferrari - battle it out for ultimate honours.

PSV does have one leading light in Luuk de Jong, the top goal scorer in Holland, who is often able to transcend his team-mates and outperform the club he plays for.

Is it too much of a stretch to say Max Verstappen is Red Bull's equivalent of de Jong? Probably not, and the connections don't end there.

Just 21 years old but already a veteran (this season he'll rack up his 100th F1 start), Verstappen is a massive PSV fan. He's quickly risen to become the top scorer in his team, so much so that Red Bull is happy for him to lead amid what has been its biggest change in years as it welcomes new engine partner Honda after a turbulent period with Renault.

Max seems handy enough with a ball but when asked to compare himself as an F1 driver to a relevant footballer (if Lewis Hamilton is Cristiano Ronaldo, who would Verstappen be?), the answer is humble: "Compare myself with someone? I would go seventh tier or something like that! Nah, I prefer to leave that to someone else."

We're speaking to Max at Puma's headquarters in Herzogenaurach, near Nuremberg in Germany.

A game of football is on the agenda on a five-a-side pitch, and it turns out Verstappen has a left foot like a rocket. The accuracy may not always be bang on, so if the ball's coming, duck...

As a Puma athlete, he's used to dealing with people who excel. The headquarters is split across two buildings with a 100-metre transparent tunnel bridging the Autobahn that passes underneath.

On the day of our visit, Usain Bolt is due to run across it as part of a marketing stunt that also features the models Adriana Lima and Cara Delevingne, 
but his whereabouts are presently unknown. He appears to have gone shopping instead.

The tunnel acts as a timeline of the brand's history. The story goes that brothers Rudolf and Adolf Dassler founded the Dassler Brothers Shoe Factory in 1928, but later in life they fell out and Rudolf set up Puma just down the road at the same time as 'Adi' founded Adidas. The two companies remain separated by a matter of miles and an ongoing rivalry.

As you walk through the tunnel - a horizontal version of the glass lift in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, if you will - the names speak to you and evoke epic memories of sporting greats, of World Cups, gold medals and championships.

It begins with Puma's first boots, taking in records from athlete Tommie Smith, tennis great Boris Becker, Bolt and others, while also featuring boots from Pele, Diego Maradona as well as F1 stars Michael Schumacher, Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel. It's this parade of legendary sporting names that prompted F1 Racing to ask Max about his sporting legacy and place in the racing pantheon.

But Max speaks more passionately about his FIFA Ultimate Team than he does his reputation or legacy.

He's content to live in the here and now. And why not? Having been fired into the sport at the age of 17 with Toro Rosso in 2015, he had no choice but to grow up quickly in professional terms. He was fiery in the cockpit anyway, and the early jump to F1 led to some displays of impatience and silly mistakes - which he wasn't always keen to acknowledge.

What we're seeing now is a more experienced Verstappen, with the ability to shut out the negativity and perform to the highest level, something that's necessary for all great sports people, regardless of the discipline.

Almost all of that maturity has been forced onto him, whether through the age he entered F1, heading up big marketing campaigns for the likes of Red Bull and Puma, or taking control and leading the development direction of what is Red Bull's most important car for years.

Asked what the biggest difference in the team is since the addition of Honda, Verstappen responds with a blend of flippancy and seriousness that demonstrates how comfortable he is with his surroundings: "We have a bit more sushi around. That is very positive. I'm not a fan, but the mechanics, they love it. They have all their lunchboxes prepared very neatly, a Red Bull meal here and the Honda meal there.

"There is a lot of motivation in the team and everybody is really pushing hard," he adds. "I think having this new engine partner in the team just gave a bit of a fresh start in a way and everyone is really looking forward to the challenge.

"I think we feel like there are more opportunities with Honda, and at the moment there is a really good vibe. I'm always giving feedback of what can be done better or what I need to go faster so that doesn't really change.

"As we go through the years I get more experience and that will help. As will talking to the team about how we can improve the car. Of course Daniel [Ricciardo] left and I got Pierre [Gasly] in the team. But from my side I don't think a lot has changed. In general I think Red Bull always delivered parts to both drivers at the same time. I don't really see a difference at the moment."

An unusually loquacious response from Verstappen, who typically approaches questions the way he might attack a fast corner - fearlessly and pedal-to-the-metal.

The passionate and unwavering way Verstappen both defends and attacks in an F1 car hasn't changed in his career so far, for all the barbs aimed at him by rivals and pundits.

Part of that is down to having to push so hard to extract the maximum out of the package he has; he's hell-bent on fighting at the front but his car hasn't quite had the all-round performance to do it, which would account for his continued punchiness.

What's been most intriguing about the early races of this season is the manner in which the Red Bull-Honda partnership hasn't met expectations: the engine, far from being the weak point, is demonstrating great potential while the chassis - usually a Red Bull strong point - hasn't been consistent enough for both drivers to get the best out of it.

"The better the package the easier it is because you don't need to go over the limit all the time," says Max.

"If you have a really good car, a really good engine, maybe you don't have to force an overtake at a certain point of the track. You can wait a few corners later or on a straight or even later in the race.

"Sometimes in the past few years, we've been struggling for top speed in general so you had to force a move under braking, and sometimes it would go wrong, and I think at the moment with the package we have we are getting towards having an easier life on track and at the end of the day that can only help your consistency."

Consistency is arguably one thing this prodigious talent has lacked so far in his Formula 1 career, but having spent all of his time at Red Bull up until this year with Daniel Ricciardo - arguably one of F1's most consistent and best - that's a target providing Verstappen with a lot of pressure, a high benchmark which can make the mistakes look all the worse.

Now free of Ricciardo, Verstappen has more pressure to step up and lead, but less pressure from a team-mate in Pierre Gasly, who has had a turbulent start to his spell at the team.

Still only 21, Verstappen is already approaching the total number of starts made by his father, Jos, who made his last and 106th start at the age of 31 for Minardi in 2003. Jos is a massive part of how Max got to where he is today.

While Jos has scaled back his attendance at F1 races, he remains a confidant for Max in this new age of maturity. 
Max no longer needs to be told to calm down, or to stop making mistakes. He is a man in his own right and what Max gets from Jos is advice, from someone who has experienced
all aspects of the sport.

"It was mainly karting, he was a very big help for me," says Max. "Without him I wouldn't be sitting here right now. 
In Formula 1 in the first few years he was really involved - in the background - but giving me advice and tips.

"Now it's more like I'm still telling him everything that's happening through the weekend, but he's only there now for 50% of the races. The first few years he was there every race.

"But I guess that's quite normal, especially when your son is just starting F1, you want it to go really well and with his experience it was always good to have him around. It gave me a lot of confidence as well. It's a very new world as well so to have your father around I think is best.

"Every morning or evening I text him to tell him what we are going to do with the set-up and he gives his opinion.
He likes to have the information when he's sitting at home as well, which I can understand. He's my dad but he's a person I can talk to in the background."

There's no doubt Max is now ready for the challenge of leading his team despite his relatively young age - and Jos has to take a lot of credit for that.

The burning question left is how quickly Honda and Red Bull can deliver Verstappen a package with which to fight Mercedes.

"To be honest, I'm still waiting for the real battle against Lewis," he says, with a wry smile that says it's a big target for the future.

"Of course I've been driving with Lewis for a few years now but I've never really felt like the whole season I was fighting against him."

The thought of a Hamilton/Verstappen battle in the future is a tantalising prospect for F1 fans. Verstappen probably wouldn't have been ready for a Lewis at the height of his powers at the start of his career.

But now calmer and more experienced, Max is more than ready for the challenge - a shot at goal he's not going to blaze over the crossbar...