The manager of Red Bull Racing Dutch driver Max Verstappen feels that Scuderia Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc has a good chance of winning the Formula 1 world championship in the future despite defeat this season.
Max Verstappen mathematically secured his second Formula One World championship after the Japanese Grand Prix at the Suzuka circuit by taking his 12th victory of the season from 18 events which were held so far. Ferrari driver Charles Leclerc finishing second on track but received a post-race time penalty due to an incident with the Red Bull of Sergio Perez on the final lap of the rain-shortened race at the Suzuka circuit and was relegated to third place.
This result, alongside a rules loophole that meant full points were awarded despite the short race, allowed Max Verstappen was able to celebrate the crown, as the Maranello team was once again left ruing the F1-75’s lack of pace in this second part of the season.
Yet Max Verstappen’s manager Raymond Vermeulen pointed out that Charles Leclerc is as equally talented as the Dutchman a future Formula 1 champion.
Raymond Vermeulen believes most of Scuderia Ferrari’s difficulties this year were due to the reliability issues of the F1-75 and feels that individual mistakes, such as Charles Leclerc crashing out from the lead at the Paul Ricard circuit in France are a direct consequence from this source.
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‘A lot of the mistakes that happened to both Ferrari drivers was because they seem to have quite a loose rear, that’s a little bit unpredictable,” – Raymond Vermeulen said in an interview for the F1 Nation podcast.
“And then obviously, if you’re already a little bit on the backfoot, you push that just extra couple of percent more, and you’re driving closer at the limit, then it’s obviously easy to make a mistake. It’s easy to finger point, but I think if he has the right package, Charles is definitely also a future Formula 1 World Champion, if he has the car that he requires to do [so.]” – Max Verstappen’s manager added.
Raymond Vermeluen also pointed out that Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc are “equal talents” with only the Red Bull RB18 and Ferrari F1-75 challengers making the difference in their World Championship battle this year:
“I think Charles is equally talented. I mean that some of his pole position laps that he put together this year were just unbelievable. I also think he has the race craft, but if you have bigger tyre degradation during the race, there’s not much that you can do as a driver. You can be like Sergio Perez who is one of the best in saving rear tyres, but I think they are all pretty good in that sense. Ultimately, you need a car that performs over one and a half hours, and Charles didn’t have this for most of the races.” – Max Verstappen’s manager concluded.
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