Red Bull’s team principal reflects on how Dutchman matured from an overly aggressive driver into Formula One’s world champion
Christian Horner leans in, pauses and then smiles as he considers what it’s like to manage Formula One’s world champion. It transpires that for all that he is ferociously competitive, Max Verstappen makes for good company. “At Silverstone he will come round for dinner and what impresses me is how good he is with the kids,” says the Dutchman’s Red Bull team principal. “He is just totally at ease with the children. He is genuinely a nice lad.”
This weekend at the Japanese Grand Prix, Verstappen is likely to become a double world champion. He will successfully defend the title he first claimed last year if he wins the race and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finishes lower than second. In doing so, after an almost completely dominant season, it will be a statement of authority and a thorough vindication of the faith Horner and Red Bull placed in him when they first put him in an F1 car in 2015 when he was just 17.