Is Verstappen giving himself a 25th birthday present?

This Friday September 30, Max Verstappen will be 25 years old. Obviously there won’t be time for large-scale celebrations over the race weekend, but the Red Bull Racing driver has a good chance of making a great birthday present for himself – to win a second championship title.

We wrote 10 days ago about the scenarios under which this can happen. And if in a week everything goes well, i.e. Max wins the race, and somehow the rest of the conditions are met, then he becomes the fifth champion to win on the difficult city circuit of Marina Bay.

So far, only Sebastian Vettel, who has had five wins in Singapore, Lewis Hamilton (he has one less), Fernando Alonso (2 wins) and Nico Rosberg (1 win) can boast of this.

September 22, 2019 will apparently go down in Formula 1 history as the day of Vettel’s last victory: the four-time world champion then climbed to the top of the podium for the 53rd time. Of course there are still six races to go before the end of the season, but given the real level of competition of the Aston Martin team, a real miracle would have to happen before Sebastian could add to his list of victories.

In general, the Singapore races took place more than once according to a very unusual scenario (it is enough to recall the debut Grand Prix of 2008, remembered as a “crashgate”), so it is a thankless task to think of something in advance . If everything goes as Max himself and his father, Jos Verstappen, who will of course fly to Singapore with his son, probably would like, this will be Max’s sixth win in a row.

But there is no doubt that the rivals will do everything they can to prevent this. Mercedes racers are gaining confidence and Lewis Hamilton wants to win at least one race this season. This race could well be the Singapore Grand Prix, especially as the team’s technical director Mike Elliot believes the Marina Bay track is suitable for the W13 car.

Of course Ferrari is also quite a formidable force, and in 2019, for example, Scuderia won a winning double and at the end of that race the team asked Charles Leclerc not to attack a partner. This year, the Monegasque is sure to claim victory – this could be compensation after all sorts of failures and difficulties that have plagued him and his team in recent months.

But Carlos Sainz also generally performs great on city circuits, so he’s also making some plans of his own and would like to add at least one more to the Silverstone win.

In general, all the main characters, as always, have some reason to do everything they can to succeed next weekend. And if Verstappen doesn’t manage to make himself a luxurious birthday present, he probably won’t be very upset, because then the chances of a title in Suzuka, in the Japanese stage of the championship, only increase. .