Max has to be one of the most misquoted drivers in F1. The way people have created narratives about him out of thin air, based on things he has never said himself, can be infuriating as a fan.
Here are some things that I am fairly certain Max has never said:
“I never feel stress” “I never get stressed about anything” -> Max has on multiple occasions mentioned that he personally likes to approach life in a relaxed way and to not let stress affect his life. He has said he likes to take things day by day, and to not lose sleep over what’s coming in the future. He has stated that he thinks there’s no use stressing over things outside of his control. That doesn’t mean he doesn’t feel stress and he hasn’t claimed that he doesn’t.
“I have never let pressure get to me” -> recently max said this about pressure: “When the pressure is the highest or when you really need to perform, normally I perform because I enjoy that kind of aspect.” Max has never said he doesn’t feel pressure. But he is an elite athlete capable of channeling pressure into results.
“I have never made any mistakes before” / “I’ve never done anything wrong on track” -> Max has stated numerous times if he could give his younger self advice, he wouldn’t, because it’s important he makes the mistakes he did because he needed to learn from them. Max has also approached fellow drivers and apologised on numerous occasions (that we know of) for moves he’s made on track. He has also talked about his own behaviour at times, eg Hungary 2024, and said he shouldn’t have acted that way.
“I don’t care about whether or not I win” -> this one is frankly ridiculous if you think Max fkn Verstappen doesn’t care whether or not he wins. Max, who famously talks about how he was taught by his father that 2nd place is the first loser, Max who has said no matter where he’s at in a championship fight he will turn up wanting to win that weekend. How this has even become a narrative is BAFFLING to me.
“I don’t get upset” “I don’t care about F1 in general” -> Max has stated that the reason he gets upset in the car from time to time is because he cares. He expects high performance from himself and from his team. He’s talked about times he has been upset with himself and he’s very clearly been upset with the team on occasion which has led to some infamous road rage moments. He has said himself that the day he feels nothing in the car is the day he no longer cares, and that day has clearly not come yet. Max is evidently a very passionate driver and he has never claimed not to be.
“I don’t care about winning the championship” -> Max has said that he wouldn’t lose sleep if he didn’t win his 5th in a row, because he already won 4 and that’s 3 more than he ever dreamed of winning. Max has never said he doesn’t care about winning the WDC. He has talked about the mid-season this year where he was certain he was out of the championship and so there was no use stressing over this. But that doesn’t mean he doesn’t care at all, and again, he never said as much.
“I don’t want to break any world records” -> another weird narrative. Max has said on numerous occasions that while all of the records he has broken / could break are great to have but at the end of the day they are just records and they are not what he sets out to achieve. This doesn’t mean he doesn’t want to have them or can’t intend to break them. He has stated he is not someone who is particularly motivated by being the driver with the most wins or anything like that because that isn’t who he is, not that he would not want to be the driver with the most wins.
“I don’t want to be the driver with the most WDCs” -> again, Max has said multiple times that is not aiming to have more than 7 championships. He has said it would be nice. But he isn’t aiming for that because, as he said in the most recently released interview, it won’t make a difference in his life when he’s 50, 60, 70 years old.
There are more, but I’ll stop. Max’s words get twisted constantly. Not even that, sometimes they get made up entirely. Like the narrative around him changing as a driver post-2021, so when he has a road rage moment everyone claims, “see he hasn’t changed at all!!!” When max himself has said he has never changed his driving style.
Lots of drivers get their words twisted. It’s typical of fans and journalists to do. But it’s especially frustrating when it’s a driver like Max, who is so incredibly straightforward and clear about how much he does care. It’s like people aren’t capable of reading past an editorialised headline or watching longer than a 10 second video clip.
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