The fact that Jos Verstappen has abandoned his son Max at the motorway service station or not spoken to him for a week is an unusual but well-known anecdote from the Verstappen family. For the Dutch, everything was geared towards success, which also paid off: in 2021, Max Verstappen became Formula 1 world champion for the first time.
Max can laugh about his father’s stories today, even if it sounds like a hard time for many. But he himself says: “Without my dad I wouldn’t be sitting here today. When he stopped Formula 1, he sacrificed the next twelve years and did everything to get me where I am now.”
“We’ve traveled countless hours together across Europe, and not only that,” he continues. “The work he put in was really crazy. He worked on my engines, prepped my go-karts, was on the dyno…”
Verstappen Sr. took his son to school and then went right back to the workshop. “And when I finished school, I went there and he was still working,” says the Red Bull driver. There the father also showed his son what he does all the time so that he understands what he is doing on the track all the time.
“I’m really grateful for these times,” says Verstappen, admitting that at the time he didn’t really understand why he was doing all this and why he had to be there. “But it definitely helped me later in my career.”
Jos Verstappen still travels to the races and is a regular in the Red Bull garage. But he no longer interferes in the form: “Of course he no longer tells me: ‘You have to give in here and you have to do this and that’,” said Verstappen. “But I just like to share every single weekend.”
“I think it’s very important to have such a relationship,” says the Formula 1 world champion.