Sometimes it’s tough to find the chink in the armor of an elite athlete, but Max Verstappen showed that he too is human during this past Formula 1 race weekend.
Two-time reigning Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen had somewhat of a weekend to forget at Baku City Circuit, as they only session in which he found himself on top was FP1.
He qualified third and finished third in Saturday’s standalone sprint race, with his result coming after his RB19 suffered significant contact from Mercedes’ George Russell, and he qualified second and finished second in Sunday’s Azerbaijan Grand Prix, with his chance at a win hampered by an ill-timed pit stop.
Since last April, it has been rare to see Verstappen anywhere other than P1. He entered Sunday’s 51-lap race around the 20-turn, 3.73-mile (6.003-kilometer) temporary Baku, Azerbaijan street circuit having won16 of the last 22 races. Yet he wasn’t his usual dominant self and finished behind teammate Sergio Perez in both the 17-lap sprint race and in the main event.
One lackluster weekend is no reason for Max Verstappen to lose his status as the Formula 1 world championship favorite.
However, it did highlight three key weaknesses which others can position themselves to exploit. It’s not often that the 25-year-old Dutchman gives anybody the opportunity to the exploit them, but this past weekend was one of those times.
Here are those three weaknesses.
Max Verstappen small weaknesses: No. 1 – Qualifying
Maybe you had a laugh at this one, but the statistics show that, throughout the course of a weekend, qualifying is the weak point for Verstappen.
Verstappen is often hailed as a driver capable of putting up a massive lap time, but more often than not, Saturday isn’t where he shines.
Despite having more than seven times as many victories (37 to 5), Verstappen only has three more pole positions than Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc (22 to 19). That’s a 6.39x difference in margin.
Despite winning five times as many races than Leclerc last year (15 to 3), he took fewer pole positions (10 to 7). That’s a 7.14x difference in margin.
Had he shown well in qualifying in Baku, who knows how things would have gone? He certainly wouldn’t have been run into by George Russell on Saturday, that’s for sure.
Of course, to call qualifying a “weakness” is probably a bit of a stretch.
Considering Verstappen’s pole-to-win ratio (77.27%) is second to none on the all-time list among drivers with more than one, and the fact that a majority (54.05%) of his wins have still come from a position other than pole, calling this a “weakness” almost means that you already inherently have to consider Verstappen the best Sunday driver of all-time. Think about it.
It’s more along the lines of a relative “non-strength” compared to his true strengths, but this, among other “non-strengths”, was evident on about as lackluster of a race weekend you’ll see Verstappen have.
Max Verstappen small weaknesses: No. 2 – Starts
While Max Verstappen has not had much issue in winning races on days when he doesn’t have the fastest car (20 of 37 wins from non-pole) and capitalizing on having the fastest car when he does (17 of 22 poles to wins), lap one hasn’t always been his friend — especially lately.
He was jumped by both Mercedes drivers in Melbourne and had to fight back to retake the lead, and his jump off the line during a red flag standing restart a little bit later in the event also did not go all that smoothly.
Then in the Baku sprint race, George Russell got a much better start and eventually got past him for third place, even though he needed to drive a hole in the side of the RB19 to do it. Verstappen eventually got him back, but it was a position he never should have lost to begin with.
This might well be the most important weakness on the list because of when it occurs. Sure, there is plenty of time over the course of a 300-kilometer race to fight back, especially in a rocket ship of an RB19, but when all 20 cars are so close together, the potential for incident is at its highest, as we saw in Baku.
Let’s not forget Abu Dhabi in 2021, either. While everyone likes to talk, or in some cases obsess, about the finish, Verstappen started on pole and immediately lost the lead to Lewis Hamilton, despite being on a softer tire.
Max Verstappen small weaknesses: No. 3 – Street courses
Sergio Perez’s second street course win of the season has prompted some to call him the “king of the streets”, and it’s a fair title for a driver whose five wins since joining Red Bull in 2021 have all come on city streets.
Max Verstappen hasn’t been nearly as dominant in street course races as he has in road course races. While he has won 10 of the last 11 road course races going back to last year, including eight in a row at one point, he has only won one of the last four street course races, with Perez winning the other three.
However, this is just another “weakness” that is more of a “non-strength” than anything.
Verstappen still won more street course races than Perez did last year (three to two), and despite the fact that Perez has one more street course victory this year (two to one), Verstappen has actually scored more points in street course races (62 to 61), excluding the Baku sprint.
Factoring in the sprint, Perez has a one-point advantage (69 to 68), but there are no more street course sprints on this year’s schedule. There are five more on road courses, however.
Speaking to Beyond the Flag before the season began, Verstappen confessed that he is always looking for ways to improve, even following a season which saw him break the all-time single-season wins record.
“I know that sometimes it can be hard to replicate the season, but I think it’s the same as with the car, right? You always try to improve it, and I always look at the little details,” Verstappen stated.
One of his mottos is “always keep pushing to improve”.
“Even when you have had a good race, there are always things that you could’ve done better,” he said. “And then of course you also learn from the bad races. By always trying to look for these little improvements and general experience you gain year after year, you try to do better. But of course it also depends a lot on the package you have around you.”
He certainly has a number of key areas in which he can improve moving forward, which, in some way, could be scary for everybody else, considering the elite level at which he has been performing as it is. The fact that a second place effort is treated as a bad race is evidence of that.