Jos Verstappen: "I thought Max was going to win"
Published on 18 September 2017 by Stefan Meens
Usually Max Verstappen looks back at the previous race on the Dutch sports talkshow ‘Peptalk’, but this week father Jos reflected on the Singapore Grand Prix.
The main talking point was the first corner incident between Max and the two Ferraris of Kimi Raikkonen and Sebastian Vettel. “The first thing you think is ‘not again’. I’m mainly sad for Max. If you look at the footage, he has a normal start, better than Vettel. Kimi had an amazing start and you see him coming. But then Vettel drives so far to left and to Max. Because Kimi steers a little bit to the right, Max is sandwiched”, explains Jos.
“You can’t blame Max. I think that lies with Vettel. He pulls extremely far to the left and Kimi probably doesn’t see it. He sees Max and wants to defend. Vettel is also fighting for a championship so he should be a bit more careful. I also noticed that the Ferrari drivers are maybe worried as soon Max is nearby. That’s pretty obvious if you their response at the start.”
For Jos, the crash came unexpected as he had high expectations for his son. “My gut feeling was Max was going to win the race. Max was relaxed as well before the race. There was no tension and he was really up for it.”
Post-race, Max and Jos briefly evaluated the situation: “We had a quick chat in his room in the Red Bull Motorhome and then I had a beer and watched the rest of the race because it was a good one. We also didn’t speak to the Ferrari guys as they had left straight away. And to be fair I didn’t really want to. We focus on our team and we’ve all seen what happened. It’s part of racing.”
The next race is Malaysia, a track both Max and Jos like: “I always enjoyed it and so does Max. There’s always a chance of rain so it could be interesting. Also, Red Bull are getting stronger and stronger so let’s hope we’re on the first or second row. That should give us plenty of opportunities.”
Regarding Max’ run of bad luck, Jos is frank: “Let’s have all the bad luck this year so we can start over next year.”
