Red Bull highlight Verstappen status as sporting ‘legend’

Max Verstappen has been compared to several sporting legends by Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché.

Red Bull technical director Pierre Waché has rated Max Verstappen alongside sporting “legends” Roger Federer and Michael Jordan.

The three-time world champion has broken several records in recent years and is currently on course to claim a fourth consecutive crown.

At just the age of 26, Verstappen has already moved into third on the all-time winners list with 61 victories – only Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher are ahead of him with 105 and 91 wins, respectively.

Waché has hailed the Dutch driver as a legend not purely because of his records in F1, but more due to his ability behind the wheel.

When asked by Crash.net why Verstappen is so special, Waché said: “Because he’s like all the legends in each sport.

“Some people are able to do stuff that nobody else is able to do. I don’t know how or why. But it’s what he is able to do. He’s like Roger Federer, like Michael Jordan. These types of people that are able to do stuff nobody else can do.

“The driver is the controller in the car, and he has the capacity to control and to operate the car that nobody has. It gives him the capacity first to free some brain capacity to drive at the same time and analyse what he needs and what he wants.

“His feedback is very interesting, because he operates the car at the limit, how nobody else is using it.”

Verstappen has been forced to dig deep at recent races following the improvements made by Mercedes and McLaren.

Red Bull has been forced into a development race as it aims to keep ahead of the competition, relying on driver feedback from Verstappen and team-mate Sergio Perez.

The Milton Keynes-based outfit’s major problem currently is understanding why its pace has declined, something driver dialogue is helping “cure”.

“The feedback from both drivers is very important to how we develop and how we cure, because making a quick car is fundamentally not difficult,” he said.

“What is difficult is to make a car quick, to be able to be used by the driver. If I am in the car, I would not be able to extract the performance.

“You operate this kind of car so specifically that the driver, how they use it, is very important.”