AFPMax Verstappen
NOS Sport•vandaag, 13:31
Posing in racing overalls and underneath the telling text ‘Unstoppable’, racing phenomenon Max Verstappen graces the latest cover of the renowned American opinion magazine Time Magazine.
He is the first Dutch person to receive this honor since Shell director John Loudon in 1960. Politician Geert Wilders was on the cover in 2017, but he did so together with his French colleague Marine Le Pen, to promote an article about the rise of populism. Only nine Dutch people preceded the driver in the history of the now hundred-year-old magazine. Verstappen is the first Dutch athlete.
It says something about the international stature of the three-time Formula 1 world champion. With the Grand Prix of Las Vegas approaching, Time Magazine managed to get Verstappen for an interview, of which the Dutchman rarely attended – besides the obligatory press conferences during Grand Prix weekends. gives. Partly thanks to the success of the Netflix series Drive to Survive, Formula 1 and Verstappen are also ‘hot’ in America.
This is the cover of the edition with Verstappen on the front:
With “I have no desire to hang around among famous movie stars” Verstappen makes it clear in the interview that he is the opposite of seven-time world champion and rival Lewis Hamilton, a style fanatic who likes to attend fashion shows. He is not looking forward to all the glitz and glamor in Las Vegas.
Especially in the passage about the period in which he traveled the European circuits as a young kart driver, Verstappen says something that he rarely expresses: “At a young age I saw other children who were playing, not concerned with their future. But my father (former Formula 1 driver Jos Verstappen, ed.) had a plan. And I had to stick to it.”
Pro Shots / PanoramicJos and Max Verstappen celebrate the first world title.
“Sometimes my father thought I was a bit lazy. We certainly had discussions about that,” says Verstappen, asked about the moments when the tension between the fanatical father and his racing son increased.
Like when Verstappen junior was overtaken at the age of 14 during a kart race in Naples, tried to recover with a risky action and then crashed. Jos Verstappen was furious and ignored his son during a stop at a gas station. “He wanted to talk, I didn’t,” says Jos in the article in Time Magazine. “If you don’t shut up, I’m going to throw you out of the car.”
According to senior, there has never been any physical contact. Verstappen only hit Max once; on his helmet, before a race in England. “He needed that at the time. And he won.”
Chicago Bulls
The sometimes Spartan racing upbringing was not in vain. The 26-year-old driver now has three Formula 1 titles, 52 Grand Prix victories and countless records and dominates the premier class of motorsport in his superior Red Bull, just like Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton did before him.
Verstappen doesn’t talk about the predictability in Formula 1 this season – he has already won seventeen of the twenty races. “The NBA also survived when the Chicago Bulls dominated,” he says in the article. “Later on people would say: that was great. If you are a true fan of the sport, you just have to appreciate that a team is doing so well.”
2023-11-09 12:31:03
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