Max Verstappen’s race engineer pinpoints the ‘turning point’ in the Dutchman’s F1 career

The Dutchman Max Verstappen and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase have been working together since 2016.

Max Verstappen’s race engineer pinpoints the ‘turning point’ in the Dutchman’s F1 career

Max Verstappen with Gianpiero Lambiase. (via IMAGO)

The Dutchman Max Verstappen concluded the 2023 as one of the best seasons ever in the history of Formula 1. However, Verstappen wasn’t always the same in his early days as his long-time race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase revealed a turning point in the Dutchman’s career.

Verstappen has been paired up with Lambiase since 2016 hence both have worked with each other very closely. GP talked about the two stages of development for the 26-year-old and added that the first stage was back in the early stages of 2018. Lamibase claimed that it was a tough phase back then where the Dutchman crashed a lot.

YouTube video
Working closely with him, there's been two stages in his development, The first one was in early 2018, where we had a fairly rough ride in the first six or seven races.
GP said, as reported by racingnews365.com.

Further, the 43-year-old recalled the stint back in 2018 where Verstappen found it difficult to manage good results. This point for the Dutchman was termed as the ‘turning point’ by Lambiase as Verstappen realized that he had to change. Furthermore, after the mid-season, the reigning world champion found his form back and became more competitive.

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We couldn't do anything but crash into something or somebody I think that year, there was a turning point where he realised he needed to change or things are going in the wrong direction. From the midseason onwards, he was in really competitive against Daniel for the rest of that year.

Gianpiero Lambiase also highlighted the second phase of development

The first phase was back in 2018, however, since then the second phase of development for Max Verstappen has been ongoing. As Lambiase commented the second phase was a build-up from 2018 where Verstappen figured that for championship contention, he needed to consistently be at the chequered flag and score more podiums.

Max Verstappen
Max Verstappen (via IMAGO)

Additionally, the 43-year-old highlighted that the season of 2020 was a shock for the Dutchman as the car in that season was not as competitive as the other challengers of Red Bull. However, due to Verstappen’s ultra consistency, scoring better results was sufficient enough regardless of the championship contention.

Regardless, Verstappen made a great comeback from the 2020 season and scored his maiden championship in the 2021 season of Formula 1. Although a controversial victory, Verstappen never backed down from that form and has been crowned the world champion for the third time in a row in the season of 2023.

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