Max Verstappen, a double World Champion with Red Bull, talked about the process of Red Bull’s struggle and how they had just put their heads down, did the work and it finally paid off after 6 years in 2021.
Max Verstappen told how he learned to have a lot of patience, as it took a while for Red Bull to actually break through Mercedes’ hegemony. After all, Verstappen came to his current team in 2016 and only became world champion for the first time five years later.
When asked what prevented Red Bull from competing for the title, the 25-year-old said that in hindsight, is easy to that I saw this coming but I always believed in the process.
“At a certain point it just clicked from one year to the next. We really made a leap forward. In hindsight, of course, it’s easy to say: I saw this coming. You don’t know, but I believed in the process because I felt like something was coming,” he said.
“You can’t force something like that and say we have to win now when at one point we were the third fastest team. It’s a process and then you get a few people in maybe different positions, you get a good group together.
“We had a few years where engine deals fell apart and then it was just a bit of a struggle. Sometimes we had a pretty solid package, but we fell short on top speed. That made it very difficult to show the true potential. Then came Honda, that was again a bit of a work in progress. But after a year we were already very competitive, which was great to see.”
In the end, Verstappen’s belief in Red Bull is paying off really well, and it looks like he’s on his way to taking his third title home as he is facing very little competition for that.