He had come up through karting from the age of eight with no shortage of speed, and in 1984 and 1986 he won the Dutch Championship. His meteoric rise, having spent barely two years in professional racing driving, was eerily similar to what his son would achieve two decades later.

It goes on to predict that ‘if Max has inherited the racing talents of both his parents, a new F1 driver for the year 2020 has been born’. On the very last lap of the final race of an unbelievably arduous and controversial season, Red Bull’s Max Verstappen nervelessly overtook the seven-time World Champion Lewis Hamilton of Mercedes to clinch the first place that thrust the young prodigy to the narrowest of victories and to his first World Drivers’ title.

Born into motorsport, Max started karting aged four and in 2015 became the youngest driver ever to race in F1, less than six months after his 17th birthday. At first I was annoyed at the fact that the beginning, once again, focussed more on Jos than on Max ( one of the things that annoyed me about the other book) but the balance between information about Max and information about those who surround him was a lot better. They put him in their car at Estoril the day after the Portuguese Grand Prix, his first ever drive in the monstrous V10 engines that were prevalent at the top of motor sport at the time. The early chapters deal with Jos Verstappen (warts and all), Max’s Belgium birth but Dutch racing upbringing, his family life and Jos’ hardcore grooming of Max through the junior Dutch and European karting championships up to F3.

I don't know a lot about the history of the sport and about how things work and it gave me a thorough introduction. It had some interesting points about Max’s record breaking journey into F1 and his dominant skills as a driver, but I was looking for more in terms of his own story not his father’s (who is a total dick and was given way to much attention in this for the drama). He was 10desperate to get back into an F1 car as soon as possible, with his reputation for raw speed ensuring his name was never far from the newspapers and magazines when someone was struggling. Hughes’ immaculate credentials and first-rate access enable him to generate fresh and fascinating insights, and to paint a fully-rounded and richly-textured portrait of one of the most exciting young sportsmen on the planet.F1 consolidation: ever-growing maturity in each of the next three seasons brought seven more F1 victories, culminating in Honda-powered 2019 delivering third place in the championship standings. By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions.

Jos meanwhile did attend the funeral along with Max’s sister Victoria, but not the memorial in Housmans. The championship beckons: following pandemic-afflicted 2020, Max toppled Lewis Hamilton from his throne after a controversial season finale. Horner’s eyes were on stalks, as wide as if he himself were driving the car, scanning the countless screens with every possible piece of data for any signs of trouble or opportunities for advantage.Material on this site includes photos of books and selected photographs for the purposes of comment, review and critique as permitted by applicable copyright laws. The fairytale begins: after débuting in Australia, his full F1 season with Toro Rosso in 2015 brought ten points-scoring finishes — and much acclaim. One example is when they started talking about the history of zandvoort in more depth then the last few years of max's career! It quickly turned into a fight, in which a 45-year-old man was left with a fractured skull with Jos identified as the culprit in court.