When Max Verstappen was promoted to Red Bull a few races into 2016 it was suggested that his father, Jos, was instrumental in getting the move to happen and that if the team didn’t promote his son, he’d be off elsewhere.
Now it seems he’s getting bolshy again as he’s made some comments about the future of his son’s career. Max is contracted to Red Bull for next year but has an option to leave at the end of 2018 if he so wishes, and Jos has essentially warned Red Bull that might be the case if the team can’t provide him with a winning car.
Speaking to Dutch broadcasters RTL, Jos said:
“Max wants to become a champion and he will do anything to win. Right now he does not have such an opportunity, but he uses this year to become stronger. Next year, it is clear what our goals are. We want to win, and if this does not happen, the situation will become more complicated.”
Being demanding might have worked when it came to the internal politics of the sport, but I’m not sure that simply asking for a faster car next year is going to magically make it happen, Jos! And by ‘complicated’ I’m pretty sure he doesn’t mean that they’ll sit and listen to Avril Lavigne songs if the car doesn’t win, but instead that he’ll be off to a different team.
Max has suffered horribly in terms of reliability this season and it’s understandably been a source of frustration for the 19-year-old. His father continued:
“At the moment Max cannot do anything. He is doing everything right, and he feels good in his skin, but he just wants to win. That’s what you notice about Max. The disappointment that he cannot win, which is why he has had some problems. He has never experienced that before.”
Ahh yes, because Max is the first good driver to ever suffer from poor reliability and a car which isn’t quite able to win races. He’s undoubtedly going to go on to achieve great things, but his father putting all sorts of unnecessary pressures on the team with media quotes like this isn’t going to help him get there any quicker!
Ferrari have shown interest in getting Verstappen in the past, and there have even been rumours of him joining the team next year, though that seems highly unlikely. Where he ends up in the next couple of years is going to be interesting to see because if one thing’s for sure, it’s that events involving Max are never boring.
