Pierre Gasly recalls when Max Verstappen’s father Jos Verstappen lost his ‘s**t’ over the Dutchman losing a race
Pierre Gasly recalled an incident where Jos Verstappen was harsh with his son Max Verstappen during his junior karting days.
Max Verstappen with Jos Verstappen and Pierre Gasly, images via IMAGO
Max Verstappen is considered one of the greatest Formula 1 drivers of all time. However, as the son of former F1 driver Jos Verstappen, his climb to the pinnacle of the sport has not been so easy. The 52-year-old’s way of teaching Max racing has been labeled as abusive by many over the years. Alpine‘s Pierre Gasly shed light on an incident where Jos lost his cool after Max finished second in a race in his junior days.
Jos Verstappen is an ex-F1 driver and amassed a total of two podiums in his time in the sport. Wanting to fulfill his dream of becoming a world champion, he pushed his son Max Verstappen to pick up racing as a career. Despite the young Dutchman being full of talent, his father always used to criticize and punish him in unimaginable ways.
Speaking about how stringent the 52-year-old used to be, Pierre Gasly revealed an incident from when he used to race the reigning F1 champion in his junior days.
After a race in Spain, I won that race and Max finished second behind me, I come back and his dad lost his s**t, yelling in Dutch, then insulting him in English words I won’t repeat on camera, but they weren’t nice. He grabbed Max’s helmet, took it and threw it at him saying ‘No, get out! Go back to the tent! You can’t even win one of your races!’ So the pressure was obvious. It was intense pressure, race after race.
Pierre Gasly said
Gasly said that there was intense pressure on Max to perform at every race as he knew that he would get scolded by his father and possibly even be beaten up if he did not give it his best.
Jos Verstappen lashes out at Red Bull following personnel exodus
Despite the harsh treatment, Jos Verstappen continues to be present at Max Verstappen’s races in F1. Moreover, he has taken a strong stance against the Red Bull management in the past few months and has called out team principal Christian Horner for alleged wrong practices.
Jos revealed that he complained about how multiple senior figures within the Milton Keynes-based team were leaving, but the team glanced over this issue.
This is what I warned about. The team then says: ‘Oh, it doesn’t matter, we have someone else (who we can put on that position).’ But it’s too many people now (leaving). And Max gets questions about it every time and so on. So yeah, I think it’s just not good, what’s happening at the moment.
Jos Verstappen said in an interview with Motorsport
Red Bull currently find themselves in a vulnerable position in the Constructor’s Championship. With McLaren extending their lead every race weekend and Ferrari closing in on them, there is a good chance the Austrian giant could finish third by the end of the season.
Geetansh Pasricha
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