Max Verstappen has dominated F1 over the past two seasons while Mercedes have been forced to settle for scraps.
Former Mercedes CEO Nick Fry believes that Max Verstappen could beat the rest of the field – including seven-time world champion and former title rival Lewis Hamilton – in equal machinery and that he would still win, even if he was driving a ‘s**tbox’.
Verstappen and Hamilton shared one of F1’s greatest title battles in 2021 with the World Championship going down to the final lap of the final race in Abu Dhabi. However, rather than enjoying another close fight the following year, Red Bull enjoyed a major performance gain on Mercedes, leaving the two rivals some distance apart.
Instead, Verstappen was left fighting Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc before Red Bull’s impressive development trajectory left the Scuderia in the dust and he claimed a second successive title. The 26-year-old then proceeded to take things up another notch in 2023, winning 19 out of a possible 22 Grands Prix as he broke record after record.
Speaking to OLBG, Fry said: “Johnny Herbert’s idea of having a one-off race where everybody drives the same car would be a good one if it was practical! Those kinds of ideas have been toyed with in the past, but the issues lie in the sponsorships, which are so closely tied to drivers and cars. That’s where it gets difficult.
“Unfortunately, I would have to say that Verstappen is showing that he is the best driver at the moment, and I don’t think it would matter much. It could even play into his hands because he’s shown he’s good enough to be very adaptable and would probably drive any of the cars better than his competitors.
“I heard someone say once ‘If you can drive, you can drive anything’. I don’t think it would matter if you put Max in a s***box or a Red Bull car, he’d probably still beat the rest of them. He’s very adaptable. I don’t think it would change much, sadly.”
This prediction will be treated as nothing less than an insult by Hamilton, who still believes he has what it takes to fight the three-time world champion for F1’s greatest honor, provided Mercedes can produce the required machinery to compete with Red Bull.
The Silver Arrows are undergoing a major shift in design philosophy this winter as they look to claw back ground in the development race, but it is a tall order to produce a car worthy of beating a Red Bull team that finished with over double Mercedes’ 409-point tally in 2023.
