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It’s 10 years since Max Verstappen’s sole year of competition in junior single-seaters which promoted his swift elevation to Formula 1 and motorsport superstardom.
He has now won three world championships, all with Red Bull, who beat the likes of Mercedes to get his name on a contract. Famously, they brought him into F1 at just 17 years old, prompting the FIA to introduce an age limit soon afterwards to prevent anyone as young as him competing in the top flight again.
But Red Bull’s management had become convinced Verstappen was a star of the future. Franz Tost, then in charge of their junior F1 team Toro Rosso (later AlphaTauri, now operating as ‘RB’), recently identified the race which marked Verstappen out as a potential superstar of the future – a performance which he though stood comparison with the most successful F1 driver at that time, Michael Schumacher.
It came at the Norisring midway through the FIA Formula 3 European championship. Verstappen bypassed several lower categories and made F3 his first major single seater championship, and despite his inexperience collected enough points over the opening 12 rounds to lie fifth in the championships.
But there was clear potential for him to do better. He had only scored in five of those races, and already taken his first win, at the Hockenheimring. In the fifth of the season’s triple-header rounds at Spa-Francorchamps Verstappen hit his stride, becoming the first driver that year to sweep all three races.
The next round took place at a circuit utterly different to the long, sweeping Belgian circuit. The Norisring is a compact street course measuring just 2.3 kilometres. Though it officially has eight corners, realistically only four present a challenge to the driver, even in wet conditions, which made Verstappen’s performance all the more impressive.
Victory in the weekend’s opening race lifted Verstappen to second in the standings. The ultra-consistent Esteban Ocon lay 106 points ahead, having taken five wins and nine further podium finishes up to that point, but with 425 points available Verstappen could still entertain thoughts of mounting a challenge for the title.
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He placed his Van Amersfoort-run car on pole position, pipping Ocon by less than a tenth of a second. As the race began on a damp track Verstappen held his lead while Tom Blomqvist demoted Ocon to third.
Verstappen’s lead was 3.9 seconds when the race was interrupted by a Safety Car period due to a collision. But rain began to fall and the red flags flew, giving teams the chance to switch their cars to wet weather tyres.
When the race restarted a quarter of an hour later Verstappen held his lead while Ocon and Blomqvist tangled. The Safety Car returned once more, and by now it was obvious the race would not run to its 42-lap distance. At the end of lap 23 the Safety Car pitted for the final time and Verstappen streaked away from the pursuing Jordan King.
In the wet conditions, on a relatively simple track, the rate with which Verstappen left his pursuers behind was breathtaking:
Lap 24: 0.485sLap 25: 1.847sLap 26: 2.835sLap 27: 3.590sLap 28: 4.707sLap 29: 6.511sLap 30: 7.896sLap 31: 9.004sLap 32: 8.827s
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Toro Rosso boss Tost, following proceedings on television between F1 rounds, took note. “The most impressive race, at least in my opinion, was Max’s in Nurenburg at the Norisring,” he told Dutch magazine Formule 1 recently. “I remember it well.
“Wet track, it was raining. As you know, a lap at the Norisring is short: it takes less than a minute. Still Max was one or two seconds faster there than the rest. It was incredible, he just flew off in the rain. Very impressive.
“It immediately reminded me of a race by Michael Schumacher in Formula Ford at the Salzburgring in the 1980s. He won that one in wet conditions and in the process wiped the floor with everyone. It was immediately clear to me that Max is an extraordinary driver: a huge talent with an incredible feel for the car and grip. That’s really a big advantage to him.”
Tost soon spoke to Red Bull’s motorsport consultant Helmut Marko about Verstappen’s potential. “For me, it was clear that I wanted Max in our car, as a driver and not as a test driver,” said Tost.
At the time Verstappen was still two months away from his 17th birthday, but Tost was convinced. “When Max first tested at Friday practice, he was just 17. Many ‘experts’ said it was far too early. To which I said: but not for Max Verstappen.
“Because he is not a passenger in the car, as you often see with newcomers, he is driving the car. The way he controlled the car, completely mastered it. Extraordinary. Believe me, if that hadn’t been the case, he really wouldn’t have been in the car. Then I would have said go and drive Formula 2 for a year first.
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“But I was one hundred per cent convinced that we could take Max straight from Formula 3 to Formula 1. The speed wasn’t a problem for Max at all either, he got used to it straight away. A driver of his level can switch to a faster car without any problem: within 15 laps he has everything under control.”
Just 44 days later, Verstappen was announced as a Red Bull junior driver.
Video: Verstappen’s remarkable 2014 Norisring win
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