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Jos Verstappen critical of current F1: "We didn’t do any of that"

27 November 2020 at 11:26
Last update 27 November 2020 at 14:30
  • GPblog.com

Max Verstappen knows that Formula 1 has changed a lot compared to about twenty years ago, when his father Jos Verstappen was active. The Red Bull Racing driver regrets that during a Grand Prix weekend he can only give it all during qualifying. In his view, everything in the race is too much about tyre management and saving fuel.

"It doesn't matter if you go 300 or 360. If you don't have the sound of the engine...," said Verstappen in an interview with CarNext. Jos joins his son on this: "It's also the emotion it brings."

Nowadays there is a lot of criticism of Formula 1. It is said to be too much about tyre management and saving fuel, which prevents drivers from going full speed on Sundays. According to the Verstappen's it has to do with different things.

Max would like it to be different

"Yeah, I mean in the race you want to do a one stop. Because the problem is that you can’t really pass with these kind of cars on the most of the tracks. What you do is just to back out of it, the guy behind you will get stuck and you just make sure that you have the tyre life to go to the end after your stop. At some tracks we have to lift for fuel, because the fuel tank is not big enough to go flat out all the time," Max Verstappen explained.

The 23-year-old driver cited last month's Grand Prix at the Nurburgring as an example. "I would of course prefer to go flat out, like we had in Germany. There was like twelve low fuels. We had new tyres, then you are pushing and you see also the lap times were coming down and we were only two and a half seconds from what we did in qualifying."

Jos Verstappen makes comparison

Jos Verstappen knows that the current pinnacle of motorsport cannot be compared to the years in which he drove at the highest level. "We had to push all the time. That was good and that’s how the racing should be. You have to push and go to the limit. Now is all the things about tyre management and fuel saving, we didn’t do any of that," added the 48-year-old Dutchman.