Max Verstappen has confidently declared he “would beat” any teammate put alongside him in Formula 1.
Speculation over the second Red Bull seat has picked up in recent weeks following Pierre Gasly’s surprise victory at Monza, but the team has consistently maintained Alex Albon remains their preferred choice.
Last weekend at Mugello, however, Max almost belittled Gasly’s moment of glory and then voiced his almost arrogant belief that well, no-one could challenge him.
“Helmut [Marko] and Christian [Horner] have been saying for a long time that they don’t want to change anything,” he told ORF. “That’s okay from my side.
“In the end, it doesn’t matter who sits next to me. I would beat them all.”
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One driver who might disagree with that view is Lewis Hamilton, who has previously suggested the Dutchman would be welcome to join him at Mercedes.
Although former F1 driver Christian Albers believes that is a fallacy.
“Even if it was available [the Mercedes seat], I can already tell that Lewis Hamilton would never agree to Max Verstappen driving next to him,” he said on De Telegraaf podcast.
“I have to say that he has made the best choice with Red Bull because it is a team that continues to fight and fight,” he added.
“You saw last year that they were constantly coming up with those updates, they don’t give up easily, it’s really a fighting team. You can see that with the pit stops, they keep fighting, fighting, they want to be the best.
“I personally think he’s in the best place there. There is no other option, where do you want to go? Have you seen how big the gap is from Red Bull to the rest?”
On the competition between the two teams, however, after his third retirement of the season on Sunday, Verstappen, who now sits 80 points behind Hamilton, is ruling out any title bid until 2022.
“I hope that we will be closer to Mercedes next year,” he said. “I don’t think we will beat them.
“With corona, you can’t change that much about the car but I hope that there will be a new direction for us in 2022 with the new regulations.
“We still want to win every weekend, but the championship is over,” Max concluded.