{"id":145361,"date":"2025-05-30T23:40:12","date_gmt":"2025-05-30T23:40:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/145361\/"},"modified":"2025-05-30T23:40:12","modified_gmt":"2025-05-30T23:40:12","slug":"max-verstappen-driver-of-the-year-despite-mclaren-success","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/145361\/","title":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen “driver of the year” despite McLaren success"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nico Rosberg<\/a>\u00a0has called four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen<\/a>\u00a0the “driver of the year” during the first day of practice for the Spanish Grand Prix.<\/p>\n

Speaking on the Sky Sports F1 broadcast, the 2016 champion explained that the Dutchman still has a chance of the drivers’ championship title:<\/p>\n

\u201cMax is still right in there. The last normal track was Imola, and he dominated the race there. He was very, very fast.<\/p>\n

\u201cHere we\u2019re seeing he\u2019s a little bit behind, but he\u2019s still close, and you never really know what fuel loads the teams are doing there. He\u2019s driving incredibly well.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, he\u2019s the driver of the year so far. You can never count out Max.”<\/p>\n

He added:<\/p>\n

\u201cIt was really interesting for me because it was the first time I\u2019ve been out on track in a long, long time, and I really saw the Max Verstappen magic out there.<\/p>\n

\"Nico <\/p>\n

Nico Rosberg, Sky F1, on the grid<\/p>\n

Photo by: Mark Sutton<\/p>\n

\u201cFirst of all, these cars are incredibly nervous on the rears. You see the drivers working the wheel a lot and the rear is very snappy, always. It\u2019s very heavy, snappy and looks like a handful for everybody.<\/p>\n

\u201cMax Verstappen comes through the corner, and it\u2019s really incredible. He dials out the understeer and makes it quite an oversteery car, and then every other driver would have massive snaps and really freestyle, but he is able to really keep that oversteer within this beautiful, very narrow window where he never goes over it.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you go over, you overheat the tyres, you snap, you lose a load of time – and he just balances that oversteer within this tiny window amazingly. It\u2019s like a work of art out there, it\u2019s incredible.\u201d<\/p>\n

The former F1 driver went on to compare Verstappen to his Red Bull team-mate Yuki Tsunoda<\/a>, stating:<\/p>\n

\u201cWith Yuki Tsunoda, he comes in, big understeer, and it still snaps to oversteer as you go from that switch, going on power.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat\u2019s the essence of it. That\u2019s why Max is always six-tenths quicker than every single team-mate that you put next to him.<\/p>\n

\u201cAll these team-mates are very good drivers and it comes down to the fine feeling and the speed of processing the very, very fine details of what\u2019s going on at the rear.<\/p>\n

\u201cTiny, tiny inputs where you are just reacting that little bit faster than anybody else out there and just being more precise. It\u2019s like art.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rosberg on Verstappen’s season so far<\/p>\n

Later, Rosberg reviewed some of Verstappen’s best moments on track so far this season. Joining fellow former F1 driver and Sky Sports F1 analyst Anthony Davidson at the SkyPad, the pair discussed the season-opening Australian Grand Prix. Commenting on Verstappen’s exquisite wheel-to-wheel racing abilities.<\/p>\n

“I had to be on the receiving end of [Verstappen’s overtakes] once upon a time, where he just drove flat out round the outside of me exactly in these conditions. Okay, I was fighting for a championship. He was not. So that\u2019s a big difference.”<\/p>\n

He continued:<\/p>\n

“And we\u2019ve seen that over and over again. He\u2019s just amazing also in wheel-to-wheel racing.”<\/p>\n

The duo also discussed moments from the Japanese and Emilia Romagna Grands Prix as the German branded Verstappen’s impressive overtake of Oscar Piastri at the start of the Imola race as\u00a0“one of the greatest overtaking moves we\u2019ve ever seen.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Verstappen ended today\u2019s first practice session second-fastest behind Lando Norris, and in the second session he was third-fastest behind Oscar Piastri and George Russell.<\/p>\n

Despite the dominance of McLaren<\/a> this year, the four-time champion is just 25 points behind drivers’ championship leader Piastri, sitting third behind Norris.<\/p>\n

In this article<\/p>\n

Lydia Mee\n<\/p>\n

Formula 1\n<\/p>\n

Max Verstappen\n<\/p>\n

Red Bull Racing\n<\/p>\n

Be the first to know and subscribe for real-time news email updates on these topics<\/p>\n

Subscribe to news alerts<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Nico Rosberg\u00a0has called four-time Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen\u00a0the “driver of the year” during the first day of…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":145362,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4103],"tags":[4199,61562,707,4200,1073,969,749,27221,79,970,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-145361","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-f1","8":"tag-f1","9":"tag-f1-spanish-grand-prix","10":"tag-formula-1","11":"tag-formula1","12":"tag-max-verstappen","13":"tag-nosyndicate","14":"tag-red-bull-racing","15":"tag-spanish-gp","16":"tag-sports","17":"tag-trendingteam","18":"tag-uk","19":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/114599429697297197","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145361","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=145361"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/145361\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/145362"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=145361"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=145361"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=145361"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}