10 2GS Saturday August 1 2020 | the times
Sergio Pérez did not break any rules by
travelling to Mexico before the British
Grand Prix but his team principal feels
the sport’s governing body should
consider keeping Formula One
personnel within their social bubbles
for the remainder of the season.
Pérez, the Racing Point driver, will
miss the race at Silverstone tomorrow
having tested positive for coronavirus
following a trip to visit his family in
Mexico after the Hungarian Grand
Prix a fortnight ago. Under the FIA
rules drawn up to preserve a biosecure
environment, team personnel are not
obliged to remain within the social
bubbles to which they were confined
for the first three weeks of the season.
But Otmar Szafnauer, the Racing
Point team principal, wonders whether
these restrictions should now be in
place for the rest of the season to
prevent further cases that could jeopar-Pérez’s test
John Westerbyover the two days, you need to learn
the track very quickly. In go-karting,
there’s always quite a lot of time and
no real restrictions. But when you go
to cars, it’s so limited, it’s really
important to be quick from the start.”
This ability to get up to speed
quickly has been a striking feature of
Verstappen’s career. He had driven 14
grands prix before he was old enough
to pass his driving test in the
Netherlands and became the
youngest grand prix winner at 18. As
he matches his father’s tally of grand
prix starts this weekend, it is now Jos
who is known for the exploits of his
son, rather than the reverse.
The proliferation of sons following
their fathers into the racing elite
raises a further question, at a time
when there is a drive to increase
diversity in the sport. It is a reminder
not just of the advantages these
young drivers enjoy from their
famous parents’ guidance, but also
that there are significant financial
barriers that prevent many from
progressing. Among Verstappen’s
competitors on the F1 grid this
weekend are two other sons ofnotable F1 moneymen: Nicholas
Latifi, the Williams driver, is the son
of Michael, the Canadian
businessman, who has invested
£200 million in McLaren and has
been linked with a bid to buy the
Williams team; Lance Stroll, quickest
in second practice yesterday, drives
for the Racing Point team partly
owned by his father, Lawrence.
Nobody doubts, however, that
Verstappen’s sheer speed and raw
talent have propelled him to his
present position rather than any
favourable treatment and, as he aims
to interrupt Hamilton’s run of five
wins in the past six British Grands
Prix, he was the quickest car in first
practice yesterday.
When he strolls around the
paddock now, he thinks back to the
few memories he has of following his
father’s races as a child. “I was so
little, it was all a big play area to me
and I could just run around,” he said.
“There were a lot of people, a lot of
big trucks.” Was he given a chance to
drive one of those big trucks? “No,
they didn’t let me,” he said. “I think I
would have crashed them.”always have to make sure you try and
do well. Everyone is different, but for
me it was never a big deal when I was
younger. You don’t care much about
the name at that point.”
It is no secret that Verstappen was
pushed hard at times by his father,
known as an uncompromising
character in his F1 days. There is a
tale of a karting race in Italy, when
Max was 15, in which he attempted an
overambitious manoeuvre and
crashed his kart irreparably. An
argument followed on the way home
and, when they stopped off for petrol,
Jos drove off without his son, who
was forced to ring his mother for a
lift. Father and son did not speak for
seven days. “I never had any surprises
in F1,” Verstappen has said, “because
no one was as hard on me as my dad.”
But Verstappen also recognises the
invaluable wisdom he picked up along
the way, particularly when he went
testing at a new track. “Some people
would be saying, ‘Take your time,
we’re here for two days,’ ” he said.
“My dad would say, ‘I want to see
within five laps that you’re right on
the limit.’ You don’t have a lot of timeSport British Grand Prix
Verstappen reaps rewards of
Max Verstappen has just emerged
from his latest coronavirus test at
Silverstone, still sniffing slightly from
the jolting experience of having a
cotton bud thrust uncomfortably far
up his nasal passage. As he sits down
to talk, the discussion among his Red
Bull colleagues has been of whether it
pays to be especially nice to the tester
wielding the cotton bud, in the hope
of being treated gently. “Oh, I’m
always nice,” Verstappen deadpans,
with that butter-wouldn’t-melt
insouciance he often exhibits after
another skirmish on the Formula
One track.
The tests are a familiar routine to
the F1 drivers by now, their
importance underlined again this
weekend by the positive test that led
to Sergio Pérez’s withdrawal, but
Verstappen is a driver who takes a
little physical buffeting comfortably in
his stride. There are not quite so
many collisions now as a couple of
years ago, but he comes into the
British Grand Prix tomorrow from an
extraordinary performance a
fortnight ago in Budapest, where he
managed to crash into the barriers
during the warm-up lap on the way to
the starting grid, placing his
participation in jeopardy, before a
typically brilliant drive that put him
second behind Lewis Hamilton.
“These things happen, luckily it didn’t
have any consequences,” he says.
“That just made it all a bit more
exciting before we started the race.”
Ever the entertainer.
Despite his latest scrape, F1’s
ultimate boy racer has graduated to
become the clear heir to Hamilton as
the sport’s superstar, cast at present in
the role of principal challenger to the
dominant Mercedes cars driven by
Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas, who
have won all three races between
them so far this season. He reaches
another landmark at Silverstone this
weekend, his 106th grand prix start,
equalling the number made by his
father, Jos. The difference is that Jos
spent almost a decade in F1 before the
last of his races, aged 31, in 2003.
Verstappen Jr, the sport’s youngest
driver when he made his debut as a
17-year-old, is still only 22.
He now sits as a standard bearer for
a host of young drivers bearing
familiar surnames who are gathering
pace on their journey towards the top
of the sport. Among the Formula Two
drivers competing at Silverstone this
afternoon is Mick Schumacher, son of
Michael, whose record of seven F
world titles Hamilton is attempting to
equal this season. He is racing against
Pedro Piquet, son of Nelson, and
Giuliano Alesi, son of Jean.
One level further down, in Formula
Three, there is David Schumacher,
son of Ralf, Michael’s younger
brother, and Enzo Fittipaldi, grandson
of Emerson. It is nothing new for the
progeny of F1 drivers to go into the
family business — think Graham and
Damon Hill, Gilles and Jacques
Villeneuve, Keke and Nico Rosberg
— but the bloodlines are particularly
strong among the new generation
seeking to emulate Verstappen.
“Those guys all have a lot of good
people around them, so I don’t need
to tell them what to do, but they
should just all concentrate on staying
as relaxed as possible,” Verstappen
said. “It definitely helps [as a young
driver] if you have someone next to
you who understands racing and has
done it themselves.”
Verstappen himself has not just one
parent who has worn a racing helmet,
but two. His mother, Sophie Kumpen,
was an outstanding karting driver in
the late 1980s, racing against the likes
of Giancarlo Fisichella and Jarno
Trulli. Does Verstappen, when he
watches old videos of his mother and
father driving, spot any particular
racing traits that he has inherited? “I
find that really difficult to pinpoint,”
he said. “I think you find your own
kind of driving. I suppose I get the
talent from my dad and my mum, a
combination of the two.”
As Schumacher Jr and his peers are
well aware, following in famous
footsteps comes with its pitfalls too.
“If you perform badly, it may be a bit
harder on you,” Verstappen said. “But
that’s also a lesson for yourself, youTough love from his famous father during karting
days gave Red Bull driver the ability to match him,
as he will do this weekend, John Westerby writes
Michael and Mick Schumacher (Ger)
Mick, son of the seven-times world
champion Michael, is competing in the
FIA F2 Championship, having won the
FIA F3 European Championship in 2018.Max and Jos Verstappen (Neth)
Max has won eight grands prix and is
the youngest driver to compete in F1,
aged 17 years and 166 days. Jos was on
the podium twice in a 106-race career.Emerson and Pietro Fittipaldi (Brazil)
Emerson won the 1972 and 1974 world
championships, Pietro is a test driver
for Haas.Jean and Giuliano Alesi (France)
Jean Alesi won the 1995 Canadian GP
and his son made his F2 debut in 2019.Jan and Kevin Magnussen (Denmark)
Kevin’s 105 races for Haas, with one
podium, outdo his dad’s 24 grands prixThe new wave of F
fathers and sonsThe name was never a
big deal when I was
younger. You don’t
care much about itI suppose I get the
talent from my dad
and my mum — a
combination of bothVerstappen, with eight race wins in F1 already, is emerging as the heir to world champion Hamilton and admits the tough