Max Verstappen dominance ‘not good for the sport’ but ‘blame the rest’
Max Verstappen is “innocent” in his current dominance in Formula 1 and one of his compatriots is hoping the other teams can catch up soon.
Verstappen has won two of the first three races of the 2023 F1 season, with a second place finish in the other race, meaning it’s the reigning world champion who took the lead in the drivers’ standings early on.
With team-mate Sergio Perez second overall, it’s a Red Bull 1-2, with the Milton Keynes outfit clearly ahead in the constructors’ standings. The next driver from another team is Fernando Alonso – the Aston Martin driver is around 24 points behind Verstappen after the first trio of events.
It’s been a truly dominant start to the season for Red Bull and Verstappen, leading to shouts from the Mercedes camp that Red Bull’s dominance is such that they are masking their absolute pace to try and ward off any possible interference with the ruleset.
Kees van de Grint: Blame the other teams
Former Bridgesone tire competition director Kees van de Grint said his compatriot’s dominance was not a good look for F1, but the blame for repeating results should lie with the teams struggling to make a comeback in the second year to keep up with Red Bull regulations.
“Of course it’s monotonous, I didn’t expect anything else, but Max Verstappen is the big winner,” said Van de Grint of the Dutch subsidiary of Motorsport.com.
“His dominance is actually not good for the sport but you can’t blame him, you have to blame the rest.”
PlanetF1.com recommends
Why Carlos Sainz needn’t be annoyed by Audi F1 rumours
Magazine editor fired for ‘tasteless’ interview with Michael Schumacher AI
Lewis Hamilton makes it clear how far Mercedes is behind Red Bull
After telling the same publication during an interview last year that he hopes Verstappen’s competition will get tighter in 2023 because he’s “too quick and too good,” Van de Grint said he would prefer to see closer races in the Seeing the whole field – even if it were, meant Dutch glory wasn’t guaranteed.
“[My statements] still standing,” he said.
“And unfortunately they came true. I give it to Verstappen to win all the races but I’m also a fan of the sport and would rather see a fight not that we already know halfway through the season that he’s world champion. It’s not what I give him, but we also just want to see motorsport. I would have hoped otherwise, but as it stands now… He’s getting better too, helped by the good car he has. What I said still says: He has no resistance.”
Kees van de Grint: Max Verstappen has become more dangerous with more patience
Even worse for the competition, says Van de Grint, is the fact that Verstappen is always improving as a racer – making life even harder for the chasing teams.
“He’s so relaxed and goes really fast,” he said.
“The calm that comes from that, which makes him think when something goes wrong, ‘I’ll make it.’ His overtaking race [in Saudi Arabia] was also something.
“Normally he might have been a bit more hectic, but now he was just thinking, ‘I can do this, we still have so many laps to go, we can do it.’ Of course we also knew that he can overtake very well with this car, especially with the DRS system.”
The article Max Verstappen’s dominance ‘not good for the sport’ but ‘blame the rest’ appeared first on Planetf1.com.