Until Max Verstappen bossed the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, it had become increasingly - and bizarrely - fashionable in some corners of the Formula 1 paddock and internet fandom to write Max off as an over-rated, overly impetuous danger to himself and others, a wunderkind whose mojo was crumbling under the pressure of sustaining the expectations thrust on him by his rapid promotion to a top-line drive before the age of 20.
And, like all crank theories, this narrative gained momentum with each new event that appeared to confirm it - the start-line shunt at Singapore, for instance, when Max's Red Bull was collateral in a contact triggered by Sebastian Vettel, and yet Max was pilloried simply for being there.
Unsurprisingly, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner takes a different view: "He's had an unbelievable year, the way he's driven. If you look at the details of it, it's remarkable."
Well, you might say, he would say that, wouldn't he? But Horner is neither wrong nor speaking with forked tongue; Verstappen excelled in 2017, matching and often beating his highly rated team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, but that excellence has been veiled by the underperformance (early on) and unreliability (throughout) of his machinery.
On paper, Max's results in the first half of the season were unremarkable, save for a podium finish in China, but it was during this phase of the year that the Red Bull-Renault combination was at its weakest. From launch until the first proper update arrived in Spain, the RB13 looked aerodynamically basic in comparison with the frontrunning Mercedes and Ferrari, and suffered from shifting balance, poor downforce, fragile brakes, and that perennial Renault issue in the hybrid era - a lack of power.
With that in mind, Verstappen did well to qualify P5 in Australia - best of the rest - and then actually make a fight of the race with Kimi Raikkonen until his brakes went off in the closing laps. It's not possible to make a rigorous comparison with Ricciardo here, since the other Red Bull had an unexplained accident in Q3, started from the pitlane and retired early.
In China, though, Verstappen was majestic after ignition coil problems consigned him to 16th on the grid: he gained nine positions with a PlayStation-style opening lap, caught and passed Ricciardo (whose race pace later improved after a front-wing change), and finished third. If you were to be particularly churlish, you could argue that he overcooked his front tyres, enabling Vettel to pass him for second, but that is a minor criticism in the context of the result.
"That was more to do with set-up," says Horner, "and where the car was at that point in time. His race was outstanding - passing all those cars early on, managing to get the intermediates going, was truly impressive. And the car was nowhere at that point."
In Bahrain Max was faster than Ricciardo in Q2 and the first of the Q3 runs before losing out to his team-mate - Max blamed Felipe Massa for baulking him on his final run - but from P6 he passed both Ricciardo and Raikkonen to run fourth before his brakes caught fire. At Sochi, a power-dependent track, Max qualified seventh - Ricciardo was fifth - but again passed his team-mate on lap one and ultimately finished a lonely fifth, well adrift of the leaders but unchallenged from behind. This time it was Ricciardo's turn to drop out with his brakes alight.
"He didn't let his chin drop," says Horner. "He just believed in the team and believed we'd get it sorted. In Australia he drove a solid race, in China he was outstanding. In Bahrain he would have been in the top three. He was on fire that night... literally! Russia, he did what he could. We were confident by then that we were starting to understand the points where the CFD and the windtunnel weren't aligned."
Just how bad was Verstappen's RB13 at this point? An F1 car's development trajectory is built on understanding exactly how every aerodynamic component works, what influence it exerts on other elements surrounding it and downstream from it, and what contribution it makes to the overall aero 'map'. When theory and practice diverge, and the on-track data fails to correlate with the results of CFD and windtunnel research, the long-term consequences are far greater than, say, having to throw a new front wing in the dumpster because it didn't deliver. It can blunt the whole development approach, sponsoring paranoia back at the factory about whether they are making the car slower rather than faster.
"We've been down a similar rabbit hole ourselves," says a senior technical figure in another leading team. "And the dead giveaway is when you see a team going back and forth on new components. To an extent it's about confidence - if you think you've got good correlation, you can press on, even if the upgrade isn't as good as you thought. If you keep going, that path might lead you to a greater step.
"What can muddy the picture is if you're generally struggling - perhaps at a new track, or if conditions are changing, and the tyres aren't working as you'd expected them to - and you've chosen that weekend to bring an upgrade... it's easy then to get lost and think your new parts aren't working. Or your aerodynamicist is sure an element is working as expected, but the driver feedback and laptime suggests that it isn't.
Armed with the updated RB13, Verstappen slam-dunked Ricciardo in Spain - he was faster in every session and almost half a second up in Q3 - only to shunt at the first corner
"But above all, you have to treat a component that's working better than expected exactly the same as one that isn't; you can enjoy the benefit of the extra performance but you need to understand how you got it, otherwise it's still bad correlation. If you're well behind where you want to be, though, it can put you under pressure to rush things through."
Adrian Newey, Red Bull's tech talisman, has been outspoken in his dislike of the post-2013 tech formula and has wound down his involvement in F1 design in recent years. Eager to keep him on the books - and out of the grasp of rivals - Red Bull have thrown him bones such as an Americas Cup project and the Aston Martin Valkyrie supercar. But with the F1 programme in crisis, Red Bull steered him back to the RB13 as soon as possible, and he reappeared in the paddock at the Spanish Grand Prix, where the first major technical update also arrived.
There was more to the RB13's underperformance than scrambled aero, though: Renault claimed to have achieved near-parity with Mercedes, or, rather, that in theory the power unit was very close - but it couldn't fulfil that potential reliably. Renault even had to row back on elements of the hybrid system, reverting to the 2016 MGU-H at the beginning of the season.
Many teams running Renault power units felt that the new F1 technical package - wider cars, bigger tyres, more downforce - actually put them at a greater net disadvantage than before, because the cars were at full throttle more often. That gap was exacerbated by Mercedes' ability to deploy short-burst 'qualifying modes' and liberate more horsepower through the murky science of oil burning.
Armed with the updated RB13, Verstappen slam-dunked Ricciardo in Spain - he was faster in every session and almost half a second up in Q3 - and came within a breath of outqualifying Raikkonen for P4, only to shunt at the first corner as he tried to pass a battling Raikkonen and Valtteri Bottas around the outside.
"That wasn't his fault," argues Horner. "It was triggered by Valtteri having a go at Kimi and they cannonballed into Max. It's difficult to apportion blame. It was a racing accident."
Nevertheless, three cars into the one line available at Barcelona as Turn 1 funnels into Turn 2 doesn't go; here, for sure, youthful ebullience was Max's undoing. But he was more measured in Monaco, where he outqualified Ricciardo once more to start from P4, only to slip behind his team-mate when a strategic play to pit early (with a view to undercutting Bottas) failed to achieve the desired track position. Once the rest of the stops shook out he shadowed his team-mate to the line without being tempted into doing something rash.
In Canada Max outqualified Ricciardo once again, starting fifth, and then sliced by both Ferraris at the start - perhaps riding his luck a little, because they nearly touched. But a potential podium went begging when his engine failed on lap 10, and third place fell to Ricciardo instead. Max was fastest through practice in Azerbaijan, and although he admitted to making a small mistake in qualifying, Mercedes' qualifying modes accounted for much of the margin between them and his P5 grid slot (Hamilton, on pole, was over a second faster than third-placed Raikkonen's Ferrari).
Red Bull later reckoned that Max could have won that controversial race had his engine not failed; as it was, Ricciardo did.
Lack of pace and reliability in the car continued to be a problem until two thirds of the way through the season: in Austria a clutch problem at the start rendered him collateral damage in a shunt initiated by Daniil Kvyat; at Silverstone he qualified and finished fourth, challenging both Ferraris on a weak weekend for the Scuderia but not having enough pace to stay ahead; and in Hungary he was pole-fast until Mercedes and Ferrari turned up their engine modes in Q3.
It was at the Hungaroring that he also made the fundamental error of clattering into his team-mate en route to harrying Bottas through the final laps to a P5 finish. Surprisingly, though Ricciardo was chippy over the team radio in the moment, the incident appeared to go no further.
"They were actually very mature about it," says Horner. "There's a respect between the two of them, and they're pushing each other hard. Outside the car I think Max has learned a lot from Daniel and the way he carries himself.
It's very relaxed between the two of them, and they quite enjoy each other's company, even though there's a bit of an age gap. Daniel has taken the sort of elder brother role - in all elements of life, even down to how to sneak back into an apartment late at night without the concierge seeing you..."
By the end of the summer break the rebooted RB13 was much closer to the frontrunning cars, but engine penalties would dictate the shape of the final phase of Red Bull's season. Max qualified fifth in Belgium but his engine blew early on, and he was quick enough for pole at Monza before Hamilton put in a Q3 mega-lap; not that it mattered, for engine penalties consigned Max to 13th on the grid.
Starting 16th in the US because of engine issues outside his control galled Verstappen less than the ultimately pointless three tenths he shipped to Vettel in qualifying. "He was really upset with himself," said Horner. "He's a perfectionist."
This was perhaps his scrappiest race of the season, and one that provided fodder for the doubters, for he banged wheels with Felipe Massa while disputing eighth and then dropped back, engaging in further run-ins with Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen.
You could argue that Verstappen had the pace to qualify on pole in Singapore and lost out because he failed to improve during his second run, but what's utterly certain - as enshrined in the stewards' decision - is that he wasn't responsible for the crash that took him, Raikkonen, Vettel and Fernando Alonso out of the race on the opening lap.
This, veritably, is the one that got away, but he made amends in Malaysia, extracting the maximum from the car in qualifying, starting well from third on the grid, and then nailing both Mercedes to romp to victory. Focused, rigorous development had silk-pursified the RB13 into a contender.
At Suzuka he started in P4, just three hundredths off Ricciardo in spite of using a higher-downforce configuration that he felt might not have been the right choice, then passed his team-mate at the start and benefited from Vettel's retirement to challenge Hamilton all the way to the flag. It was as mature a performance as his victory the previous weekend; he could have gone for a bravura overtake, but didn't, and was mindful of a front-right tyre that was badly worn.
Engine penalties dictated a grid drop for the USGP, but what was really telling was the ferocity with which Verstappen berated himself for making two errors in his final qualifying run - a lap which, if he'd nailed it, would have been on par with the one that put Vettel second on the grid. Starting 16th because of engine issues outside his control galled him less than the ultimately pointless three tenths he shipped to the Ferrari. "I'm not happy with myself," he said, "and I think this is definitely one of the worst qualifyings of the year for me."
"He was really upset with himself," agrees Horner. "He's a perfectionist like that."
Regardless, Max's swashbuckling charge from 16th was among the highlights of the race, and his last-lap pass of Raikkonen for third was audacious and clean - controversial (and fatuous) post-race time penalty notwithstanding.
His victory in Mexico a week later, from second on the grid, was overshadowed by the excitement surrounding Lewis Hamilton securing the drivers' title, but it was superbly executed: he stood his ground in the opening corners, and it was the duelling Vettel and Hamilton who ran into him rather than vice versa; he survived the impact to win by over 19 seconds.
In Brazil Renault had to run at reduced power to preserve reliability, yet Max qualified fourth and finished fifth, although he ended the season on a disappointing note, outqualified by Ricciardo in Abu Dhabi and then stuck behind Räikkönen's slower Ferrari in a tedious one-stop race to fifth place. Even Max, it seems, can't overtake at Yas Marina.
Assuredly, then, Max Verstappen has only made three or four significant errors throughout a season in which he's been stymied by technical shortcomings outside his sphere of influence. While the nattering nabobs of the commentariat might have dismissed him - until the final third of the season, at any rate - behind the scenes Mercedes and Ferrari were trying to exploit his frustration and pry him loose from Red Bull's embrace. Max had a contract until the end of 2019 that Horner described as "watertight" and in October he signed a one-year extension which brings him into step with Vettel, who inked a three-year extension with Ferrari last August.
So much for being a busted flush. Max has put himself on a three-year path to a possible Ferrari drive... or one with Mercedes, which is yet to reach an agreement with Lewis Hamilton beyond the end of 2018. Either way, when contract time rolls around again in late 2020, Lewis and Sebastian will be contemplating their careers via the rear-view mirror; Max will be just 23.
"He's hugely hungry and competitive," says Horner. "He's young, but seasons like this, where he's had some tough experiences, have made him come out the other side a stronger driver, a stronger person. He'll carry on getting better - and he's starting from a very high level."
Until Max Verstappen bossed the 2017 Malaysian Grand Prix, it had become increasingly - and bizarrely - fashionable in some corners of the Formula 1 paddock and internet fandom to write Max off as an over-rated, overly impetuous danger to himself and others, a wunderkind whose mojo was crumbling under the pressure of sustaining the expectations thrust on him by his rapid promotion to a top-line drive before the age of 20.
And, like all crank theories, this narrative gained momentum with each new event that appeared to confirm it - the start-line shunt at Singapore, for instance, when Max's Red Bull was collateral in a contact triggered by Sebastian Vettel, and yet Max was pilloried simply for being there.
Unsurprisingly, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner takes a different view: "He's had an unbelievable year, the way he's driven. If you look at the details of it, it's remarkable."
Well, you might say, he would say that, wouldn't he? But Horner is neither wrong nor speaking with forked tongue; Verstappen excelled in 2017, matching and often beating his highly rated team-mate Daniel Ricciardo, but that excellence has been veiled by the underperformance (early on) and unreliability (throughout) of his machinery.
On paper, Max's results in the first half of the season were unremarkable, save for a podium finish in China, but it was during this phase of the year that the Red Bull-Renault combination was at its weakest. From launch until the first proper update arrived in Spain, the RB13 looked aerodynamically basic in comparison with the frontrunning Mercedes and Ferrari, and suffered from shifting balance, poor downforce, fragile brakes, and that perennial Renault issue in the hybrid era - a lack of power.
With that in mind, Verstappen did well to qualify P5 in Australia - best of the rest - and then actually make a fight of the race with Kimi Raikkonen until his brakes went off in the closing laps. It's not possible to make a rigorous comparison with Ricciardo here, since the other Red Bull had an unexplained accident in Q3, started from the pitlane and retired early.
In China, though, Verstappen was majestic after ignition coil problems consigned him to 16th on the grid: he gained nine positions with a PlayStation-style opening lap, caught and passed Ricciardo (whose race pace later improved after a front-wing change), and finished third. If you were to be particularly churlish, you could argue that he overcooked his front tyres, enabling Vettel to pass him for second, but that is a minor criticism in the context of the result.
"That was more to do with set-up," says Horner, "and where the car was at that point in time. His race was outstanding - passing all those cars early on, managing to get the intermediates going, was truly impressive. And the car was nowhere at that point."
In Bahrain Max was faster than Ricciardo in Q2 and the first of the Q3 runs before losing out to his team-mate - Max blamed Felipe Massa for baulking him on his final run - but from P6 he passed both Ricciardo and Raikkonen to run fourth before his brakes caught fire. At Sochi, a power-dependent track, Max qualified seventh - Ricciardo was fifth - but again passed his team-mate on lap one and ultimately finished a lonely fifth, well adrift of the leaders but unchallenged from behind. This time it was Ricciardo's turn to drop out with his brakes alight.
"He didn't let his chin drop," says Horner. "He just believed in the team and believed we'd get it sorted. In Australia he drove a solid race, in China he was outstanding. In Bahrain he would have been in the top three. He was on fire that night... literally! Russia, he did what he could. We were confident by then that we were starting to understand the points where the CFD and the windtunnel weren't aligned."
Just how bad was Verstappen's RB13 at this point? An F1 car's development trajectory is built on understanding exactly how every aerodynamic component works, what influence it exerts on other elements surrounding it and downstream from it, and what contribution it makes to the overall aero 'map'. When theory and practice diverge, and the on-track data fails to correlate with the results of CFD and windtunnel research, the long-term consequences are far greater than, say, having to throw a new front wing in the dumpster because it didn't deliver. It can blunt the whole development approach, sponsoring paranoia back at the factory about whether they are making the car slower rather than faster.
"We've been down a similar rabbit hole ourselves," says a senior technical figure in another leading team. "And the dead giveaway is when you see a team going back and forth on new components. To an extent it's about confidence - if you think you've got good correlation, you can press on, even if the upgrade isn't as good as you thought. If you keep going, that path might lead you to a greater step.
"What can muddy the picture is if you're generally struggling - perhaps at a new track, or if conditions are changing, and the tyres aren't working as you'd expected them to - and you've chosen that weekend to bring an upgrade... it's easy then to get lost and think your new parts aren't working. Or your aerodynamicist is sure an element is working as expected, but the driver feedback and laptime suggests that it isn't.
Armed with the updated RB13, Verstappen slam-dunked Ricciardo in Spain - he was faster in every session and almost half a second up in Q3 - only to shunt at the first corner
"But above all, you have to treat a component that's working better than expected exactly the same as one that isn't; you can enjoy the benefit of the extra performance but you need to understand how you got it, otherwise it's still bad correlation. If you're well behind where you want to be, though, it can put you under pressure to rush things through."
Adrian Newey, Red Bull's tech talisman, has been outspoken in his dislike of the post-2013 tech formula and has wound down his involvement in F1 design in recent years. Eager to keep him on the books - and out of the grasp of rivals - Red Bull have thrown him bones such as an Americas Cup project and the Aston Martin Valkyrie supercar. But with the F1 programme in crisis, Red Bull steered him back to the RB13 as soon as possible, and he reappeared in the paddock at the Spanish Grand Prix, where the first major technical update also arrived.
There was more to the RB13's underperformance than scrambled aero, though: Renault claimed to have achieved near-parity with Mercedes, or, rather, that in theory the power unit was very close - but it couldn't fulfil that potential reliably. Renault even had to row back on elements of the hybrid system, reverting to the 2016 MGU-H at the beginning of the season.
Many teams running Renault power units felt that the new F1 technical package - wider cars, bigger tyres, more downforce - actually put them at a greater net disadvantage than before, because the cars were at full throttle more often. That gap was exacerbated by Mercedes' ability to deploy short-burst 'qualifying modes' and liberate more horsepower through the murky science of oil burning.
Armed with the updated RB13, Verstappen slam-dunked Ricciardo in Spain - he was faster in every session and almost half a second up in Q3 - and came within a breath of outqualifying Raikkonen for P4, only to shunt at the first corner as he tried to pass a battling Raikkonen and Valtteri Bottas around the outside.
"That wasn't his fault," argues Horner. "It was triggered by Valtteri having a go at Kimi and they cannonballed into Max. It's difficult to apportion blame. It was a racing accident."
Nevertheless, three cars into the one line available at Barcelona as Turn 1 funnels into Turn 2 doesn't go; here, for sure, youthful ebullience was Max's undoing. But he was more measured in Monaco, where he outqualified Ricciardo once more to start from P4, only to slip behind his team-mate when a strategic play to pit early (with a view to undercutting Bottas) failed to achieve the desired track position. Once the rest of the stops shook out he shadowed his team-mate to the line without being tempted into doing something rash.
In Canada Max outqualified Ricciardo once again, starting fifth, and then sliced by both Ferraris at the start - perhaps riding his luck a little, because they nearly touched. But a potential podium went begging when his engine failed on lap 10, and third place fell to Ricciardo instead. Max was fastest through practice in Azerbaijan, and although he admitted to making a small mistake in qualifying, Mercedes' qualifying modes accounted for much of the margin between them and his P5 grid slot (Hamilton, on pole, was over a second faster than third-placed Raikkonen's Ferrari).
Red Bull later reckoned that Max could have won that controversial race had his engine not failed; as it was, Ricciardo did.
Lack of pace and reliability in the car continued to be a problem until two thirds of the way through the season: in Austria a clutch problem at the start rendered him collateral damage in a shunt initiated by Daniil Kvyat; at Silverstone he qualified and finished fourth, challenging both Ferraris on a weak weekend for the Scuderia but not having enough pace to stay ahead; and in Hungary he was pole-fast until Mercedes and Ferrari turned up their engine modes in Q3.
It was at the Hungaroring that he also made the fundamental error of clattering into his team-mate en route to harrying Bottas through the final laps to a P5 finish. Surprisingly, though Ricciardo was chippy over the team radio in the moment, the incident appeared to go no further.
"They were actually very mature about it," says Horner. "There's a respect between the two of them, and they're pushing each other hard. Outside the car I think Max has learned a lot from Daniel and the way he carries himself.
It's very relaxed between the two of them, and they quite enjoy each other's company, even though there's a bit of an age gap. Daniel has taken the sort of elder brother role - in all elements of life, even down to how to sneak back into an apartment late at night without the concierge seeing you..."
By the end of the summer break the rebooted RB13 was much closer to the frontrunning cars, but engine penalties would dictate the shape of the final phase of Red Bull's season. Max qualified fifth in Belgium but his engine blew early on, and he was quick enough for pole at Monza before Hamilton put in a Q3 mega-lap; not that it mattered, for engine penalties consigned Max to 13th on the grid.
Starting 16th in the US because of engine issues outside his control galled Verstappen less than the ultimately pointless three tenths he shipped to Vettel in qualifying. "He was really upset with himself," said Horner. "He's a perfectionist."
This was perhaps his scrappiest race of the season, and one that provided fodder for the doubters, for he banged wheels with Felipe Massa while disputing eighth and then dropped back, engaging in further run-ins with Romain Grosjean and Kevin Magnussen.
You could argue that Verstappen had the pace to qualify on pole in Singapore and lost out because he failed to improve during his second run, but what's utterly certain - as enshrined in the stewards' decision - is that he wasn't responsible for the crash that took him, Raikkonen, Vettel and Fernando Alonso out of the race on the opening lap.
This, veritably, is the one that got away, but he made amends in Malaysia, extracting the maximum from the car in qualifying, starting well from third on the grid, and then nailing both Mercedes to romp to victory. Focused, rigorous development had silk-pursified the RB13 into a contender.
At Suzuka he started in P4, just three hundredths off Ricciardo in spite of using a higher-downforce configuration that he felt might not have been the right choice, then passed his team-mate at the start and benefited from Vettel's retirement to challenge Hamilton all the way to the flag. It was as mature a performance as his victory the previous weekend; he could have gone for a bravura overtake, but didn't, and was mindful of a front-right tyre that was badly worn.
Engine penalties dictated a grid drop for the USGP, but what was really telling was the ferocity with which Verstappen berated himself for making two errors in his final qualifying run - a lap which, if he'd nailed it, would have been on par with the one that put Vettel second on the grid. Starting 16th because of engine issues outside his control galled him less than the ultimately pointless three tenths he shipped to the Ferrari. "I'm not happy with myself," he said, "and I think this is definitely one of the worst qualifyings of the year for me."
"He was really upset with himself," agrees Horner. "He's a perfectionist like that."
Regardless, Max's swashbuckling charge from 16th was among the highlights of the race, and his last-lap pass of Raikkonen for third was audacious and clean - controversial (and fatuous) post-race time penalty notwithstanding.
His victory in Mexico a week later, from second on the grid, was overshadowed by the excitement surrounding Lewis Hamilton securing the drivers' title, but it was superbly executed: he stood his ground in the opening corners, and it was the duelling Vettel and Hamilton who ran into him rather than vice versa; he survived the impact to win by over 19 seconds.
In Brazil Renault had to run at reduced power to preserve reliability, yet Max qualified fourth and finished fifth, although he ended the season on a disappointing note, outqualified by Ricciardo in Abu Dhabi and then stuck behind Räikkönen's slower Ferrari in a tedious one-stop race to fifth place. Even Max, it seems, can't overtake at Yas Marina.
Assuredly, then, Max Verstappen has only made three or four significant errors throughout a season in which he's been stymied by technical shortcomings outside his sphere of influence. While the nattering nabobs of the commentariat might have dismissed him - until the final third of the season, at any rate - behind the scenes Mercedes and Ferrari were trying to exploit his frustration and pry him loose from Red Bull's embrace. Max had a contract until the end of 2019 that Horner described as "watertight" and in October he signed a one-year extension which brings him into step with Vettel, who inked a three-year extension with Ferrari last August.
So much for being a busted flush. Max has put himself on a three-year path to a possible Ferrari drive... or one with Mercedes, which is yet to reach an agreement with Lewis Hamilton beyond the end of 2018. Either way, when contract time rolls around again in late 2020, Lewis and Sebastian will be contemplating their careers via the rear-view mirror; Max will be just 23.
"He's hugely hungry and competitive," says Horner. "He's young, but seasons like this, where he's had some tough experiences, have made him come out the other side a stronger driver, a stronger person. He'll carry on getting better - and he's starting from a very high level."
