F1: Max Verstappen in profile

bet365 News Team Updated: 27 May 24 14:05

Max Verstappen is the latest great F1 champion and already has three world championships under his belt at the age of just 26.

The Dutchman already holds a stack of records for being the youngest driver to achieve notable landmarks and has set a number of all-time marks for his dominant performances in 2022 and 2023.

The Red Bull driver has won 34 of the 44 races held over the last two seasons and is a hot favourite for more success in 2024.

Formula 1

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Born	30th September, 1997
Age	26
Birthplace	Hasselt, Belgium
F1 current team	Red Bull Racing
F1 previous team	Toro Rosso
F1 debut	2015 Australian Grand Prix
F1 titles	3 (2021, 2022, 2023)
F1 2024 odds	1/5

Max Verstappen's pre-F1 racing record

Max Verstappen has a great motor racing pedigree as his father Jos is a former F1 driver while his mother, Sophie Kumpen, was a successful kart racer.

He was born in his mother's nation of Belgium, but races under the flag of the Netherlands, as his father did.

Verstappen showed promise from an early age, having begun to race karts aged just four.

He won his first title in 2005 and won Dutch and Belgian titles before progressing to European and world level. In 2013, aged 15, he became the first karter to win two European titles and a world title in the same season.

Verstappen moved into single-seater car racing in 2014 and finished third in the European Formula 3 championship with 10 wins in 33 races.

Max Verstappen's early F1 seasons

The following year he became the youngest driver to start an F1 race when he made the grid for the Toro Rosso team in Australia aged just 17 years and 166 days.

He retired due to engine trouble, but became the sport's youngest points scorer in the following race in Malaysia, finishing seventh.

He managed two fourth places for the Red Bull junior team that season, finishing 12th in the championship with 49 points.

He began the following season at Toro Rosso again, finishing sixth in Bahrain, but participated in only four races with the team before being promoted to the main Red Bull team in a switch with Daniil Kvyat.

Verstappen made a sensational debut for Red Bull, winning the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix and becoming F1's youngest race winner at the age of 18.

It was his only win of the year, but four second-place finishes helped him to fifth place in the championship with 204 points.

He finished sixth, fourth, third and third in the following four seasons, with at least two race wins each year as he honed his skills and reduced the number of mistakes that affected his early days in racing.

Max Verstappen's world championship years

Red Bull had been gaining ground on the previously dominant Mercedes team and the pair fought a fierce battle in 2021, resulting in one of the most controversial finishes to a season in the sport's history.

With nine race wins, Verstappen began the final race of the season level with Mercedes' Lewis Hamilton on 369.5 points, but he looked set to be denied when the reigning and seven-time champion had a healthy lead heading into the closing laps.

However, a late safety-car period enabled the second-placed Verstappen to close up behind leader Hamilton, albeit with five lapped cars between them.

Race director Michael Masi controversially allowed those cars to unlap themselves (but not the other lapped cars in the field) and on fresher tyres Verstappen overtook Hamilton on the sole lap after the restart to win his first world championship,

While his first success will always carry an asterisk in the minds of some F1 fans, there has been no doubt whosoever about his dominant victories over the last two seasons as the Red Bull car proved to be a class above Mercedes and Ferrari.

Verstappen won 15 races in 2022 and an incredible 19 in 2023 in addition to two second places and he also won four of the six sprint races.

His points total of 575 and winning margin of 290 points over runner-up Sergio Perez, his teammate, were both records and he will be hunting more success in 2024.