He’s the maddest Max in anyone’s language

Max Verstappen’s an animal. He’s hardcore and let’s be honest about his rivals. On the Netflix doco, they can look a bit soft.

Apologies for the trucker’s language. Which has become the tongue of Formula One. Tell the kiddies reading the national broadsheet over their breakfast, as they ought, guaranteeing they’ll go far in this world, to look away now. We’re about to publish a profanity.

It’s an impolite sentence neatly summarising Max Verstappen’s approach to the F1 rivals he keeps annihilating and the Netflix documentary he consistently treats with disdain.

“Suck my balls,” the maddest Max declares to the cameras in the latest series of Drive To Survive. He could have it written on his helmet and eventually, his tombstone. If you don’t like the Dutchman’s uncompromising, ruthless, unyielding approach, you know what you can do.

Four-time reigning world champion Max Verstappen is an old-school competitor Picture: Getty Images

While Lando Norris, Charles Leclerc, George Russell, Alex Albon and Pierre Gasly appear rather smitten by their Netlix roles and celebrity statuses, and are buddy-buddy and cute enough to form a boy band, Verstappen clearly separates himself from the pack. He’s hardcore and let’s be honest about the rest. On the Netflix doco, they can look a bit soft.

Verstappen’s an animal. The only mode is beast mode. He’s in Melbourne for Sunday’s Australian Grand Prix, and I half expect to see him walking down Collins Street with a snarl and smirk, stealing babies’ ice-creams and bursting their balloons like Gru in Despicable Me. He slides his Red Bull car through F1 races like a crocodile preparing for a kill, eyes shifting left and right, devouring his little plaything competitors to win the past four world driver’s championships. I reckon every time Norris admits to lacking self-belief, Verstappen is licking his lips, smelling blood. Every time Russell calls Verstappen a bully, it’s music to the Dutchman’s ears.

None of which is a criticism of Verstappen. You want mongrel in your F1 drivers. The maddest Max appears madder than any cut snake, madder than Mel Gibson’s Max Rockatansky, as iron-willed and uncompromising as Michael Schumacher. Clearly, he intimidates most folks on the grid and knows it. Australia’s Oscar Piastri is one of the few who seems quietly unfazed. Time will tell.

Max Verstappen during pre-season testing in Bahrain last month Picture: Getty Images

It was 2016 when Niki Lauda called Verstappen “the talent of the century”. Lauda wasn’t far wrong. Given the 27-year-old Verstappen can this year overtake the legendary trio of Juan Miguel Fangio (1954-57), Sebastian Vettel (2010-13) and Lewis Hamilton (2017-20) to join Schumacher (2000-04) as the only drivers to win five consecutive championships, and given the all-time benchmark of seven titles (Schumacher and Hamilton) is not too far down the road … you’d need sizeable kahunas to suggest mad Max won’t become the greatest in history.

And yet it’s a funny old game, Formula One, nearly as funny as cricket, and Verstappen’s record at Albert Park is bizarrely poor. It sucks. Eight starts for only one win, including three retirements, most recently when his car burst into flames after brake failure on lap four. “Shit happens,” was his response.

Verstappen says of the season-opening GP: “It’s great to be getting back to racing again. It’s good to see the first race of the season starting up in Melbourne. I drove my Formula One debut race here, so there’s a lot of memories …”

Not all are pleasant. He’s racked up 63 worldwide victories but only one in Melbourne. Animosity has erupted with the prettiest of the pretty boys, the dough-eyed Russell from Mercedes, after their spat following an incident in qualifying at Qatar last year.

Verstappen is not as interested in Netflix’s Drive To Survive series as his rivals PictureL Getty Images

Russell nearly crashed into the maddest Max when the champ was going slowly on a cooldown lap. Verstappen later roared that he “lost all respect” for Russell over the way the Englishman behaved in front of the stewards, who docked Verstappen one grid place for being the wrongdoer.

“I was quite surprised when sitting there, what was going on,” Verstappen said at Qatar. “Honestly, very disappointing. I’ve been in that meeting room many times in my life and my career, with people that I’ve raced, and I’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard. I lost all respect. You know what it is? He acts decent in front of the camera but when you talk to him personally, he’s a different person. I can’t stand that. In that case you can better f..k off.”

Russell replied: “It’s just funny, because even before I said a word in the stewards’ room, he was swearing at the stewards. He was so angry before I’d even spoken and at the end of the day, there’s nothing to lie about. The facts were the facts. He was going too slow. He was on the racing line … I wasn’t trying to get him a penalty at all.”

All of which adds spice to the Australian GP. Red Bull versus Mercedes. Verstappen versus Russell. There’s enough drama in F1 for a Netflix documentary. Not sure anyone has considered that. Might be worth a go.

“I’ve known Max for a long time and I know what he’s capable of,” Russell said. “You know, he said to me he’s going to purposely go out of his way to crash into me, ‘Put me on my f..king head in the wall.’ I knew that was a bit of a heat-of-the-moment thing, but when I went to see him the next day at the driver’s parade, Checo (Sergio Perez) was there, Carlos (Sainz) was there, and we were joking around a little bit, and I saw it in his eyes that he means it.”

Russell says he has no interest in being mates with Verstappen. That he’ll give as good as he gets this year. Russell is stepping up as Mercedes’ lead driver after the defection of Hamilton to Ferrari. Which puts him in Verstappen’s firing line. He says he refuses to be bullied. Verstappen knows what Russell can do. In three words.

Apologies for the trucker’s language. Which has become the tongue of Formula One.