Lewis Hamilton has speculated as to why he and Red Bull driver Max Verstappen have been in such intense duels on the Formula 1 track for years and why the Dutchman keeps focusing on the Briton in particular.
After Lewis Hamilton had dominated Formula 1 for a large part of the last decade, Max Verstappen has become the dominator in the premier class of motorsport in the past two seasons, clinching two world titles in a row. In the 2021 season in particular, the Red Bull driver fought a head-to-head duel with the Mercedes man, the two F1 drivers kept getting into each other on the track and cleared each other several times.
In 2022, the track encounters became fewer because Mercedes was lagging behind for a long time, especially at the beginning of the season. Towards the end of the year, however, things escalated again. At the Brazilian Grand Prix, Verstappen crashed into the seven-time world champion, received a five-second penalty and fell back. Hamilton felt almost followed by the Dutchman, as he said after the race.
Now the 37-year-old has made assumptions as to why Verstappen keeps targeting him. “I think that’s almost self-explanatory,” Hamilton told Channel 4.
“You just have to listen to what certain people say about me as a competitor,” emphasized the Brit, adding meaningfully without naming Verstappen again: “And you have to look back at how people like that are on the track next to behave towards me.” Then you would see that this behavior was very different from that towards other drivers.
Hamilton remembers his debut year in Formula 1
Hamilton attributed this to the fact that he has had such great success with Mercedes in recent years and has won six of his seven world titles with the Silver Arrows. “I can’t explain it exactly, but part of it [dieser speziellen Rivalität, die Verstappen zu ihm pflegt, d. Red.] It’s probably because I’ve had such great success here.”
It was no different for him when he came into Formula 1 in 2007, Hamilton continued. At the time, “someone else who was succeeding was the target and my concern was to challenge them.” The Brit Kimi Raikkonen, who secured the title that year before Hamilton himself became F1 world champion for the first time a year later, should mean that.
“You then want to show how tough you are, how good you are compared to that person and so on,” Hamilton explained to Verstappen’s ongoing attacks on the track.