What kind of champion will Verstappen be for F1?

Max Verstappen says it doesn’t change anything, but becoming world champion inevitably does exactly that – in many ways. So what can we expect from F1’s 34th title winner in 2022?

Alex Kalinauckas Mar 11, 2022, 9:40 AM

For the very first time, Max Verstappen is about to enter a season as a car racing champion. As a karting prodigy he secured the World KZ crown, but an intriguing element of his sensational rise through the single-seater ranks to become a superstar at the highest stage of global motorsport is that he didn’t hold a single title in cars before arriving in F1.

Not that this was his fault, really. Verstappen’s first season out of karting, his single European Formula 3 campaign, was when his legend truly kicked off, as his burgeoning reputation and results attracted intense interest from Red Bull and Mercedes about a future F1 promotion.

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Author Alex Kalinauckas

Alex Kalinauckas is Autosport's Grand Prix Editor, covering every Formula 1 race since the start of 2020. After completing a master's degree in journalism at Goldsmiths College University of London in 2014, he worked for a range of motorsport and technology publications while covering national racing as an Autosport freelancer.

A lifelong motorsport fan - no one in his family can explain quite how or why such a development first occurred - Alex joined the Autosport staff in April 2017 as the magazine’s Assistant Editor covering Formula 2 and GP3, before being made Formula E correspondent and Autosport.com’s Plus Editor in March 2018. He lives in north-east London and is constantly frustrated by the Central Line.