Max Verstappen, Red Bull Formula 1 world champion, has expressed his wish to see Fernando Alonso to win the race if he does not.
The Red Bull is on its way for the third consecutive world championship title with the Dutchman. The team is in its own class where it enjoys a great advantage over its rival. It has won every race since the start of this season, which F1 has never seen.
However, Verstappen has downplayed the advantage that it enjoys and cautioned that the Red Bull can trip up at some point. In a similar scernario, if the team misses out podium, he would like Alonso to replace him at the top of podium.
“Fernando. I like him,” said Verstappen. “He’s a real racer, and I think he deserves it.
“He never gave up. You can see he loves the sport. Sometimes you think ‘Jesus’, after so many years of having a car which was only capable of driving in the midfield, maybe you lose a bit of that love.
“But he’s a real racer. He’s an animal. So yeah, if you ask me, one driver who I would like to see win a race this year, it is Fernando.”
Verstappen is enjoying the dominating spell of himself at F1. However, he expressed his wish to win a better battle for himself.
“I think it’s nice sometimes to have good competition, honestly,” he explained. “I enjoyed, of course, 2021. But I also enjoyed the way 2022 went.
“Of course, in the beginning, we had some reliability issues, and the car was a bit heavy. But at one point, the car was also really quite dominant to the end.
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“But for the sport in general, I understand of course people get a bit bored if only one team is dominating. So I hope that more teams can get together. So that if you have a little issue, or you can’t get the set-up fully at 100%, that there is another team to win.”
Despite a great gap from its rivals, he insists the victories are never boring for him.
“No,” he said. “This is much better than anything else.”
Verstappen is more than happy to enjoy a dominating car without a serious threat to himself.
“For me, it’s probably even more motivation like this because you know that you have a winning car.
“When you sometimes come to weekends and you know maybe P5 or whatever is the best, I mean that’s still very good. But it’s probably less motivating than when you come to a race and you know that you can win.”
