I get a sense that Max Verstappen wants to stay at Red Bull. And I’ll give you 10 reasons why.
That was the number of wins the driver of his time won consecutively last season. Hardly anyone knew it, but he can match that feat in Melbourne at the Australian Grand Prix this weekend, something nobody ever achieved before his historic achievement in 2023. He’s on nine back-to-back triumphs, and we take it almost for granted.
So why would he leave Red Bull, the team that has given the Dutchman the car of his dreams?
Mercedes want him. Who doesn’t? But Mercedes are in semi-meltdown to an extent that Lewis Hamilton has jumped ship for Ferrari next year.
Verstappen had been toying with the notion of a move in light of the scandal over his boss Christian Horner sending ‘coercive’ messages to a female colleague. His father Jos may have preferred he left. But Jos is not here, and Max wants calm. He also wants the best machinery, and is signed up to Red Bull until 2028.
Max Verstappen looks set to stay at Red Bull and his ongoing success makes it easy to see why
Doubts had been raised over Verstappen’s future due to the scandal over his boss Christian Horner’s ‘coercive’ messages to a female colleague
But Verstappen is in the car of his dreams and on the way to a fourth straight world title, so why would he leave?
He has surely toyed with the idea of moving, and I recently thought he would, actually, despite winning the two opening races, in Bahrain and Saudi Arabia. Some of those around him said he would rather exit than see Horner stay on.
Sores persist, of course, but Verstappen said on Thursday: ‘I think there’s every reason to be happy, right? The car’s going really well. There are many great people in the team that are constantly pushing for better results, so for me that’s what I focus on.
‘I focus on the performance, I’m happy, and, when I go home, I don’t think about any other thing because it’s pretty fixed where I am, and that’s where I want to be.
‘I think it’s definitely been the best start so far to a year for me personally in the car. It’s just a good balance, but I think also as a team we operated really well without too many mistakes.
‘So, of course, I’m very happy with that, and I hope that we can continue that way. We try to keep on learning what we can do better, but it’s been very positive.’
Why move, Max?
Dickson’s legacy lives on
A poignant trip to Melbourne. The last Daily Mail sports journalist to travel this way was Mike Dickson. He distinguished these pages and his paper for 33 years, alternatively as tennis and cricket correspondent.
But, while covering the Australian Open in January, he collapsed and died. He was 59. I and a few pals will raise a glass to his memory here this sad week.
I’ll raise a glass to the memory of Daily Mail sports journalist Mike Dickson (pictured) this week
Walker adored Down Under
I always think of Murray Walker when visiting Melbourne. Amazingly, the voice of motor racing was as well known in Australia as he was in England, a kind of Richie Benaud in reverse.
He would come here for the V8 Supercars, as well as F1, and broadcast with typical vim on free-to-air TV. It was part of his legend.
I remember when I was starting out as Formula One correspondent for this paper he offered his wise counsel. In that first interview he rhapsodised about travelling Down Under.
‘Australia,’ he said in high-octane decibels, ‘is the most marvellous place in the world. Switch on the taps, and they work.’ Which sounded like a somewhat low bar, but I knew what he meant – creature comforts, I think.
He continued to come this way well towards the last of his 97 years, often giving talks on cruises, frequently with Sir Stirling Moss.
He would be delighted from my hotel window, I can see Flinders Street station, the Anglican cathedral, the Rod Laver Arena and the MCG.
I’ll be thinking of Murray Walker this week, who was just as well known in Australia as England
He was a Richie Benaud (pictured) in reverse, the legendary Australian cricket commentator who became so popular in England
Memorial for Moss
A fellow devoted Daily Mail reader will be celebrated at Westminster Abbey on May 8. Sir Stirling Moss, who died on Easter Sunday 2020, 58 years minus a day after the Goodwood crash that finished his career, at a venue he lit up through his deeds of exceptional brilliance.
It had been his widow Susie’s dearest wish to host a suitable occasion to mark Stirling’s death aged 90, a desire stymied by lockdown regulations.
But she died last year of a ‘a broken heart’, having carried his ashes around their house in their Bond-style Mayfair pad with all its gadgets – TV screens that came out of the ceiling and the like – in her agonised mourning.
Now, a memorial will be held at the Abbey. Sir Jackie Stewart is among the speakers.
Susie Moss (left) always wanted a suitable occasion to mark the death of her husband Sir Stirling Moss (right), and there will be a memorial in Westminster Abbey this week
Sweary Steiner should fade away
If anyone has fallen for his own publicity it is Guenther Steiner. Nobody had ever heard of him before Netflix’s Drive to Survive and nobody has been able to shut him up since.
To quote Bernie Ecclestone of the otherwise unknown engineer: ‘He gives clowns a bad name.’
Steiner’s skill extended to swearing profusely. Nobody has made so much fame out of expletives. An act that is not as funny as he imagines, his record as of last year was to finish last of all teams, in his role as boss of Haas, now relinquished.
He says he stayed on too long at the American team. A view I wouldn’t disagree with. But not for the reasons he believes. The conceited one maintains, he wasn’t able to run the Haas as he would wish.
Well, the budget cap was meant to level the playing field, to help the smaller teams (the less successful ones, actually) catch up, yet Steiner pulled off the feat of finishing rank bottom, a low ebb he combined with a propensity for wilfully slagging off his own drivers for the cameras, Mick Schumacher first among the victims of his crassly sharp tongue.
Steiner is hawking himself about as some sort of media celebrity, doing TV work in Melbourne. He should, may I politely suggest, be quiet, and drift away to the obscurity from which he emerged.
Guenther Steiner has fallen for his own publicity after appearing on Netflix’s Drive to Survive
F1 supremo Bernie Ecclestone said Steiner ‘gives clowns a bad name’ and it is time for him to be quiet and drift away
Liberty’s greed is the real scandal
Nobody gives Mohammed Ben Sulayem a break. He is trying to run Formula One governance, as president of the FIA.
For a year and more, his enemies have been trying to bring him down. The worst they have slung at him is that he was reluctant to sanction the Las Vegas Grand Prix last season.
The race was, in fact, held because he approved its safety requirements. So it’s a strange accusation to make – one put forward from an obviously biased ‘whistleblower’.
Stories against him have been briefed prodigiously from day one of his election in late 2021, as he seeks to assert the FIA’s role as – would you believe? – the rulers of the sport.
The enemies of Mohammed Ben Sulayem (pictured) have been trying to bring him down, but it is the greed of Liberty that is the real scandal
So widely and successfully has the malice seeped through that I am pretty much the only journalist to register that he has been much maligned in a concerted attempt to discredit him.
He is not paid a penny. Yet Liberty, who own the sport, pick up every pound they can. In their greed, they have extended the calendar to 2024 races. All cash for them, thank you very much.
Imagine if B.C. Ecclestone, and CVC Capital Partners, for whom he acted as CEO for the last years of his revolutionary tenure that ran until 2017, had been as blatantly avaricious in this unprecedented manner of expansionism. He would have been pilloried to high heaven.
Liberty are testing human endurance by making the season so long, 24 rounds, and I’m not a moaner on this front, or any other, yet hardly anyone says a word against them. It’s a scandal – and sue me if I’m wrong.
