Abu Dhabi: Max Verstappen can be Michael Schumacher’s heir apparent and win multiple Formula One World Championships, according to Johnny Herbert.
The Briton – who was Schumacher’s teammate at Benetton in 1994-95 – says he sees striking similarities between the seven-time world champion and the Red Bull Racing ace.
The 19-year-old finished a superb fifth in the 2016 drivers’ championship in only his second year in F1 and Herbert hailed his remarkable adaptability.
“Oh yeah, I see similarities [between him and Schumacher],” the Sky Sports TV pundit told Gulf News in Abu Dhabi recently. “He just comes in and does the job straight away. And then his racing brain, that’s what’s rare.”
Herbert was among those left agog at Verstappen’s outstanding performance at last month’s Brazilian Grand Prix, which saw him display precocious mastery of atrocious conditions to finish third.
“I still don’t understand even today when you see the lines he was doing in Brazil, no-one else copied them until later on,” the 52-year-old Englishman said. “The whole damn grid is full of karting lines and only one guy was able to utilise them.”
Herbert added that Verstappen’s tour de force bore comparison with the great wet-weather drives in history from the likes of Schumacher and Ayrton Senna.
“He [Verstappen] has that little extra ability to search for grip and find it and than have the race craft, which I think I think makes the driver separate from everybody else. His overtaking of Sebastian [Vettel] was a [expletive] brilliant move.
“It was a little bit of skill seen from those very rare drivers.”
When Gulf News interviewed Verstappen at the 2015 Abu Dhabi GP, aged only 18, he exuded supreme confidence and said he was eyeing multiple world titles a la Schumacher.
Can Herbert envisage this transpiring?
“Yeah, sure you can. But again he needs the car to be able to do that. But it’s very equal. Daniel [his Red Bull teammate, Ricciardo] has done a cracking job.
“We’re only talking of Max because he’s a youngster.”
