Max Verstappen is so enormous that the significance of each landmark seems to

In a season of extreme superlatives, the number of records that have fallen to Max Verstappen is so enormous that the significance of each landmark seems to shrink under the mass of all the others. But in his last time out, in São Paulo, the Oracle Red Bull ace picked up one that carried particular weight, a 71-year-old totem that until this year seemed impassable. In taking his most recent victory, Max’s win rate for the season jumped ahead of the 75 percent rate, achieved by Alberto Ascari in 1952, to hit a remarkable 85 percent with his 17th win of the season. If nothing else, the number and the record underline just how incredible Max’s third title season has been. To pick through its high points and to ask if there were any lows, the Red Bulletin sat down with Max to sift the truly spectacular from the merely marvelous.

JUSTIN HYNES—Take us back to Bahrain? Did you know from the start that the RB19 was a world beater?
Max Verstappen: It wasn’t a wow moment. We were very neutral. It felt good, but you don’t know what the others are doing. You just have to remain calm and focus on your run plan. It was very steady, we didn’t really run into a lot of trouble and we could run quite well with the car. It felt quite straightforward. We really expected it to be close [versus other teams] into Bahrain and I think we were all positively surprised with how good the car was there. But that’s one track. Of course, when you go to the next tracks, and you can see that the car is quick, especially in the races, that’s always very promising. I think we had a lot of great results in tough conditions as well—where it was easy to make a mistake as a team, even if you would have a dominant car. But for most of the races, we just did an incredible job.

It wasn’t instant dominance. You had a mechanical in Saudi Arabia and you weren’t entirely comfortable with the car. When did that change?
Baku. It was maybe not fantastic that I didn’t win the race there but I learned a lot. Sometimes that’s more important than actually winning a race because from there onwards, of course, we had a great run. It was just a few settings with the car—a combination between brake bias, differential locking and engine braking. These things can be quite sensitive when you’re still learning about the car. But that was an important race to try and figure that out.

And you capitalized a week later in Miami.

Yeah, but I made it a bit difficult for myself with qualifying! (Max started the race from P9.) But I knew that we had great pace. And I knew that we could have a very good result. But I had to stay calm. Because I also did a different strategy to most people, starting on the hard [tires] and going very long, and that worked out really well at the time. So yeah, that was definitely a strong weekend to get back into the groove. The changes that I tried in Baku; already it all felt a bit better in Miami, it just felt more natural.

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I knew that I was down, and I knew it was not going to be enough if I just did my normal last sector. So I was like, “I need to send it, it’s either going to be in the wall or it’s going to be an unbelievable sector.” And that’s the risk you sometimes take—you go a little bit out of your comfort zone, which is normally not necessary, you just don’t do that. But on a street circuit sometimes you do have to do that. And yeah, I clipped a few barriers left and right! But luckily it worked out. It’s interesting because the adrenaline is super high in those moments. Your heart rate is high around a track like that and the focus you need for a good lap is always a bit higher than some others.