Mark Hughes on Max Verstappen’s wrestling style this year

British expert Mark Hughes states on the pages of The Race that Max Verstappen is clearly less aggressive this year than last season, when the Dutch driver Red Bull Racing competed for the title with Lewis Hamilton.

Max Verstappen denies this, but his style on track against Charles Leclerc, his arch-rival this season, is very different from what we saw against Lewis Hamilton last year.

Of course the old saying is “It takes two to tango”, but Verstappen was very aggressive against Hamilton before the title fight.

When he was cornering, he often pushed Lewis off the track (this was the case with Imola and Barcelona last year) or simply chose a trajectory in such a way that they both had to go to the side of the relegation zone (Brazil), or even take refuge take such reception as a test of the opponent’s reaction to braking (Jedda).

If Hamilton didn’t give up, in both cases at Silverstone and Monza, it ended in accidents. In Jeddah (and perhaps Brazil) we saw examples of misconduct rather than hard fighting, but when it came to wheel-to-wheel combat, there were always a lot of incidents.

However, a week ago, Leclerc and Verstappen faced each other several times on track in Austria, but each time they acted correctly and accurately.

If you remember the episodes that took place on the 17th and 18th laps of the Bahrain Grand Prix, which kicked off this season, there were two episodes in Turn 4, when Verstappen could just push Leclerc or make contact with his car, especially in the second case when their cars were driving side by side. However, he didn’t. Their fight at the end of the race in Jeddah also went smoothly.

But in various episodes and circumstances, competing with Hamilton, the owner of many statistical records in Formula 1, Max pretended a target had been painted on the seven-time world champion’s car.

Verstappen spent six years in Formula 1, driving cars inferior to Mercedes in speed, while Hamilton achieved new victories and set new records at the time. Maybe that’s why Max has deliberately tried to create an image of a racer who won’t be intimidated, but who will intimidate everyone himself.

It is possible that now, already in World Champion status, he feels that there is no need to race in the same way now. After all, for example in Austria in 2019 he fought very hard and aggressively with the same Leclerc.

During this season, Max was asked about this more than once, but he just waved it off and insisted that he behave on the track in exactly the same way as before. And this suggests that he’s just not in the mood to discuss this topic. But maybe one day Verstappen himself will explain what this change of style is all about.