Max Verstappen doesn’t care that Lewis Hamilton will race
Ferrari next season, after all, he wants to beat “every driver from every car”.
Having beaten Hamilton to the 2021 World title, Verstappen went
on to dominate Formula 1 in 2022 and again in 2023 while this season he’s the
favourite to secure title number four given his 47-point lead in the Drivers’
standings.
Max Verstappen: It ‘doesn’t matter’ what car Lewis
Hamilton races
As for Hamilton, he’s only won two Grands Prix since his
title fight with Verstappen and next season will seek pastures red when he
joins Ferrari.
The seven-time World Champion announced even before the
first race of this season that he would be bidding farewell to Mercedes after
12 years with the Brackley squad to join Ferrari.
As to be expected, he told the media in Brazil that he’s
“very interested” to see Ferrari’s progress with the Scuderia winning
back-to-back races in Austin and Mexico to bring their season’s tally to five.
But while the world waits to see what the Hamilton and
Ferrari partnership can achieve next season, one person on the grid doesn’t
care.
Asked by Sport Bild if Hamilton to Ferrari was ‘good or bad’
for him, Verstappen said: “I don’t care.”
“Because I want to beat every driver from every car. It
doesn’t matter to me whether Lewis is in the red or silver car.
“But I can understand that there is a lot of interest in his
move. It’s a good thing for Formula 1. It will be interesting to see how he and
Charles (Leclerc) work together within a team.”
Pressed on his first thoughts when he heard the news that
Hamilton was leaving Mercedes for Ferrari, the Red Bull driver replied: “It
didn’t really affect me. I had zero emotions.”
No Ferrari dream for Max Verstappen
When Hamilton announced he would be racing for Ferrari, he
spoke of the boyhood dream of racing in red.
“I think for every driver, I think growing up, watching the
history, watching Michael Schumacher in his prime, I think probably all of us
sit in our garage and see the screen pop up, and you see the driver in the red
cockpit, and you wonder what it might be like to be surrounded by the
red,” Hamilton said
at the time.
Verstappen never had that.
“I see it pragmatically,” he explained. “I want to win. And
I will want to drive where I have the best opportunity to do so. At the moment
that is at Red Bull.
“But it’s not like I secretly dream of the red racing suit and the thought is constantly buzzing around in my head because I’m looking for a new challenge. Especially since there are no free cockpits anyway.
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