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Max Verstappen is so good he can make onions cry, he can win a staring contest with a statue and he can make a cat bark. The difference between Max Verstappen and God is that Max doesn’t think he is God.
Watching Mad Max spend an hour fifty driving around the 5.8km Honda-owned Suzuka circuit last Sunday was like watching Leonardo da Vinci (572 today – buon compleanno Maxie – last known address, Amboise, France) paint the Mona Lisa, which some scoundrels believe was actually a portrait of Leo himself with a frock on.
No snide implications because the Maxster was wearing his Sparco Superlegga Nomex jammies while creating his art on Sunday and Leo took more than two hours on the tools in Florence. In fact, LdV took 16 years to get around the art studio track. You can’t hurry art unless you are an F1 driver.
Watching on TV (except Kayo) you don’t get a feeling for just how skilful all the F1 drivers are. They drive 40km/h faster than the speed a fighter jet takes off at, their bodies are racked by G forces five times their body weight, which can cause blood to pool in their legs, less oxygen to go to their brains and they actually stop breathing in high speed corners. And then there’s the necks. Notice that F1 drivers have thick necks. Some also have thick heads. Apart from anything else they need their neck muscles (or scalene muscles as we call them in the medico caper) to be strong during the G forces that are trying to push their necks to one side and...