“That’s where Jos still comes out in him,” Red Bull F1 advisor Dr Helmut Marko reveals Max Verstappen’s key weakness
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Helmut Marko and Max Verstappen
Dr Helmut Marko has known Max Verstappen for years and years now. Having first signed him into the Red Bull junior driver programme and helping him compete in F3 to directly giving him the dream opportunity to become the youngest F1 driver as he gave him a seat at Scuderia Torro Rosso which is currently known as Alpha Tauri. This was a risky opportunity but paid off.
Max Verstappen did not fail to impress the Austrian as he was insanely fast and kept his cool. With such a talent under their belt, the Dutch driver was booted up to the main team where he won on his debut at the Spanish GP in 2016. It was proof that he was a once in a generation talent. Ever since then, Max hasn’t left the team and has enjoyed a beautiful partnership which has paid dividends.
The Red Bull driver has won the World Championship twice now and it’s all thanks to Dr Helmut Marko who knew where to put him at the right time. Nevertheless, a driver of Verstappen’s calibre also has a few traits which aren’t very suitable. Dr Marko went on to talk about them as he spoke with the AD. He revealed the one weakness that pushes back the talented driver.
Max Verstappen tends to disappear after a bad result according to Dr Helmut Marko
The team advisor went on to talk about how the 2 time world champion tends to wander off when he gets a bad result. Marko took Singapore as an example where Max Verstappen was on the verge of getting pole but a stupid mistake by the team meant that he lost the chance. Here is what he had to say about Max and the situation that came into play after the Q3 mishap during qualifying in Singapore.
You have to get over those situations. OK, it was a mistake by his race engineer, a stupid mistake. But that’s also the engineer who did make sure he won 34 races already. Then it’s poof and he limps away”, Dr Marko stated.
“In such a situation, we know we shouldn’t talk to him for a while. Let him go, we know we will see him again. (…) That’s where Jos [Verstappen] still sometimes comes out in him. But that is getting better and better”, he concluded.
All in all, things are moving for the better as Dr Helmut Marko is seeing an improvement in the 2 time world champions behaviour as he keeps maturing to become the man he is today. With the last race weekend of the season coming upon us the team will be willing to end their best ever season with Max Verstappen scoring his 15th win and making his record even harder to break.
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Varad Joshi
(940 Articles Published)