Max Verstappen on third world title: 'This is my best year'
Published on 07 October 2023 by Florence Cobben
Max Verstappen clinched his third Formula 1 world driver's championship title in the Qatar sprint race. After the race, the brand new three-time world champion reflected on his dominant season.
“I am really very happy”, a euphoric Max tells the interviewer after the race. “And I’m also happy this happened today. That this season’s title is finally secured, that is great and to achieve this with the team is amazing. Of course you often talk about performance and you can always thank the team for that, but I also find the whole atmosphere and how much I enjoy working with these people, I find that probably more important."
Verstappen also ranks his third world title as resulting from his best season so far: “This one is the best one. I think the first one was the most emotional one, because that’s when your dreams are achieved in Formula 1, but this one has been my best year. We have so many consecutive wins, and the car is probably in the best shape as well. So this one is the one I’m most proud of because of the consistency.”
Since the beginning of the season Max saw the potential of the RB19, but did not know it would lead to such a dominant season: “It always felt nice, and it had a good balance. But, you never know what the other teams come up with. We really expected it to be close coming into Bahrain, but we were all positively surprised with how good the car was there. But that’s one track. Of course, we go to the next track, we could see the car was always quick, especially in the race, we always had good race pace. That’s of course always very promising. Throughout the year we had a lot of great results, in tough conditions as well, where it was easy to make a mistake as a team, even if we had a dominant car. But most of the races we just did an incredible job.”
This effort earned the Dutchman his title early on in the season, although he was not very occupied with this. “The momentum was growing and race after race the gap was getting better. I was looking at myself, trying to go to every single weekend trying to get the best out of it. That is more important than dreaming about the title, because dreaming doesn’t bring you anywhere. It’s about the effort and work you put in, to try and achieve your goals.”
Does Max feel he is getting better and better over the years? “I keep trying to improve. I don’t necessarily think I’m a faster driver, but I have a lot more experience in the car. You grow as a driver, also as a person in life. All these things when I compare to my first season in Formula 1, they help to deal with all kinds of pressure throughout the (race) weekend. In the end, it’s all about trying to deliver every single weekend, which I think is very hard in Formula 1.”
When asked if Max could beat the seven-title record held by Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, Max preferred not to say: ”Depends a lot on the package you drive. Personally, I’m still young, even if I’ve been in F1 for a while. I think I have quite a few more years in me to operate at my best, but we’ll see how long that is to be honest. I think it’s more about where I want to be.”
Even though the title is secured, Max still feels a hunger for success: “Today, of course, I knew I only needed to score three points to win the championship, but I still wanted to win. I’m still out there trying to do the best I can. That’s gonna be the same tomorrow. When I go to the next race, I’ll try to win again because we have a great car. I know that people around us are catching up a little bit, it’s getting tight, but the mindset is still the same.”
After the interview the festivities got underway at Oracle Red Bull Racing. Max presented his brand new championship helmet that he will wear starting tomorrow till the end of the season. This blue golden helmet is a tribute to his third title. The helmet is also available as 1:2 and 1:4 scale models via Verstappen.com.
