Max Verstappen exchanged his Red Bull for a can of Heineken. He placed it behind the sofa in the interview room and reprised his role in a TV advert by decrying the dangers of drinking and driving, at least in that order.
He then casually put his finger on a key factor that made him world champion for a fourth time, a task achieved in consecutive years to raise his name, aged 27, in lights as bright as the neon Strip on which he had just raced.
Having finished ‘only’ fifth in the Las Vegas Grand Prix, won fabulously by Mercedes’ George Russell, Verstappen said: ‘I never think of the mental side. I just go out there and drive as fast as I can.’
It was the essential, distilled reason why it is the Dutchman — rather than Britain’s Lando Norris — who was driven by a Rolls-Royce Phantom on Saturday night to the Bellagio fountains to be feted for claiming motor racing’s supreme prize.
Verstappen is the opposite of an idiot. He is highly intelligent, and a strand of his advanced thought process is a clear-headedness that banishes all self-doubt in his professional life.
Visor down or in moments of quiet between races, he does not confuse himself with recriminations or soul-searching. He sees the fastest line at every turn.
Max Verstappen won his astonishing fourth consecutive world championship in Las Vegas
Verstappen joins Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton as only the fifth driver in Formula One history to win four successive world titles
Lando Norris chased Verstappen’s tail masterfully through the back end of the season but did not quite have enough in the tank to deny the Dutchman his impressive achievement
Verstappen and Norris put their arms around each other’s backs in the pen afterwards and chatted warmly. The McLaren man had finished sixth when he needed to win here, in Qatar next week and Abu Dhabi, to have even a faint chance of wresting the crown.
And so his dream died close to midnight in the Nevada desert, but those hopes had been on nil-by-mouth since Verstappen battered him into submission in the wet in Brazil a fortnight before. It was a drive so compelling, from 17th place to first, that nobody else morally deserved the season’s honours.
‘Max deserved to win it,’ said Norris, correctly and graciously. ‘He drove a better season than I did. Max just doesn’t have a weakness. When he’s got the best car he dominates and when he’s not got the best car he’s still just there always.’
Norris has driven extremely well this season but wobbled at decisive moments. Whether he can train himself to be as steely as Verstappen is a moot point. Are these things acquired or hard-wired?
He might be chivvied along by remembering the difference between being the best racer and merely one of the best racers is that the former is elevated into a pantheon of the sport’s immortals.
Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher, on seven titles each, and Juan Manuel Fangio, on five, stand ahead of Verstappen. But time is on Max’s side, and he is almost certain to move clear of Alain Prost and Sebastian Vettel, like him on four, before he follows through on his intermittent pledge to quit before he is in his sporting dotage.
He may be cast as a pantomime villain in Britain for his controversial beating of Hamilton in Abu Dhabi in 2021, but there is no doubting his ability to get more out of his Red Bull than any other driver conceivably could. That was highlighted by his team-mate Sergio Perez finishing 10th.
The disparity in points is revealing: Verstappen 403 to Perez’s 152. It tells of one driver’s majesty and, admittedly, another’s shot confidence.
Verstappen has been forced to navigate a tricky year at Red Bull, with Christian Horner’s saga at the start of the season kicking off a year of turmoil with the perennial champions
Norris admitted that Verstappen deserved the world title and said he ‘doesn’t have a weakness’
Remarkably, Verstappen has achieved his latest annexation of the title while Red Bull lie third in the constructors’ championship. It is rare that a driver triumphs when his team do not win the constructors’ championship. In recent times only Hamilton, in 2008, and Verstappen himself, in 2021, have pulled off the minor miracle of man rising so decisively above machine.
And that is not all to be wondered at. Red Bull have been riven by division this year. They have been mired in controversy — the Christian Horner scandal, which prompted Max’s father Jos to say the team would ‘explode’ if the team principal did not quit.
With the departure of design grandee Adrian Newey, they have threatened to unravel over the past few months from a reliable winning phenomenon into a gaggle who have lost predominance.
Verstappen has kept his cool throughout, the odd radio tantrum apart, while all around him have lost their heads.
Since he won in China on April 21, he has not possessed the fastest car. McLaren took over command in Miami on May 5. Yet Verstappen still reeled off crucial wins to which his car gave him no right.
He held off a charge from Norris over the course of the longest season — 24 races — the sport has ever staged.
‘For 70 per cent of the year we didn’t have the fastest car, so we had to maximise every opportunity we had,’ said Verstappen, who rated this as the best title win of his quadruple. For the aforementioned reasons, there is no arguing with that.
When it was over, he revealed emotion over the radio. He rarely does. He is not sensitive but nor is he insensitive. His tears hidden by his crash helmet, he cried:
Mercedes’ George Russell triumphed in Sin City as Verstappen picked up the championship
Verstappen revealed his emotion over the radio after his title triumph was confirmed in Vegas
Verstappen won his title with a 63-point lead over Norris, crossing the chequered flag fifth
‘Oh my God. What a season. Four times. Thanks to everyone. More difficult than last year. I thought it was impossible. But thanks to you guys… Thanks again.’
The podium toppers, Russell, Hamilton and Ferrari’s Carlos Sainz, were whisked away to the Strip for the ceremonial in one Rolls-Royce, squashed in together. Verstappen had one to himself and his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase, known as ‘GP’.
Being feted is not what excites Verstappen, a champion without fripperies.
A year ago, he bemoaned Sin City and, far more so, the extravagant nature of the fur-and-no-knickers inaugural race, even calling the circuit dull. He slightly revised his opinion after winning on its dusty roads, mind.
‘I don’t have to drive again today,’ he said as he put that Heineken away. His drink of choice is gin and tonic, and he declared himself thirsty.