Boredom F1, Norris: Verstappen-Red Bull deadly combination” – News

Max always wins

With five poles and four successes in the first five world championship events of this initial part of 2024, Max Verstappen confirmed the predictions that saw him ready to fly away alone towards his fourth world title. The Dutch driver is too superior, his Red Bull is too strong and Sergio Perez’s internal opposition is too soft: a mix that is causing the dark shadow of the grid to fall on Formula 1 due to the danger of boredom.

Certainly the absence of tests during the world championship, associated with an infinite calendar of 24 world championship events, risks extinguishing interest in the category and making the championship become a long nine-month runway for Verstappen and the Red Bull team.

Lando Norris’s opinion

“If we continue to see the same driver win without fighting, then it’s obvious that everything is starting to get boring.”observed McLaren driver Lando Norris in recent days at PAadding: “Max is one of Formula 1’s best ever drivers, in one of the most dominant cars ever. Talk about a deadly combination. If there hadn’t been Max, but two Sergio Perezes, it would have been different“. A bit like the same speech made recently by Helmut Marko, who underlined that with Verstappen hypothetically in Ferrari, the world championship would have taken a completely different turn.

Marko is proud

He who puffs out his chest is his own Helmut Marko, which brought Max Verstappen into Formula 1 at just 17 years old – beating competition from Mercedes and Ferrari – and is now reaping the decidedly lush fruits of his bet: “It’s not boring at all. In skiing there were men like Franz Klammer or Hermann Maier, who won a lot. If the performance of an athlete is extraordinary, then it must be accepted and valued. And especially stop saying it’s boring, it’s thanks to Max”.

Marko then cut short the lack of an internal rivalry with Perez: “Sergio knows his place, does his best and is second in the championship. What else should he do?”. The Austrian then concluded the interview with the De Telegraaf: “Max clearly made a step forward in qualifying. And it’s about time, because numerically he is a little behind in poles compared to victories. He is doing even better than last year. Max can concentrate even more on finding a better set-up to have a good car for both qualifying and the race.”