David Coulthard shares the moment he realised Max Verstappen doesn’t think like ‘normal people’

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It says an awful lot about how dominant Red Bull Racing have been over the past few seasons that there are question marks over their performance this season.

Despite Red Bull being 42 points clear of McLaren in the Constructors’ Championship and Max Verstappen having a 78-point buffer to Lando Norris in the driver’s standings, there are concerns that their spell of dominance of Formula 1 is coming to an end.

In reality, even though McLaren and Mercedes have caught up to Red Bull in recent races, every other team on the grid would love to be in the position they’re in right now.

More importantly, every other driver would will be looking at Verstappen’s advantage with 10 race weekends left and wonder if it’s possible to close that gap before the end of the campaign.

The Dutchman’s quality has never been called into question and although the circumstances surrounding his first world championship were controversial, his title wins in 2022 and 2023 were absolutely dominant.

Verstappen’s talents were evident as soon as he was promoted into the Toro Rosso team as a teenager and winning in Spain on his Red Bull debut only cemented that opinion among those in the paddock.

Speaking on the Talking Bull Podcast, former Red Bull driver David Coulthard was speaking about Verstappen’s talents.

The 26-year-old is incredibly focused and expects everyone around him to perform at the same level that he does.

Verstappen was left frustrated in Hungary because of a poor strategy call and while that may have played a part in his mistake heading into turn one that saw him make contact with Lewis Hamilton, more often than not his intuition and that aggression works in his favour.

Coulthard has now recalled the moment he realised that Verstappen was not a ‘normal person’ and instead one of the greatest drivers to grace Formula 1.

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David Coulthard lauds Max Verstappen after realising he’s not a ‘normal person’

Reflecting on the Dutchman’s F1 career and one important moment in particular, Coulthard said: “But you know, Max getting that first title, that could have gone either way.

“People still ask about it today, who could have won it. And I said at the time, I think both Max and Lewis deserved to win the World Championship that year because those two were on such a level.

“In the end, there had to be one and Max couldn’t have done anything more than what was laid on the table for him. And when he went for the pass in the hairpin, I’m thinking end of back straight.

“But Max doesn’t think like normal people. He’s like too far back and he gets the pass done and we’re in the commentary box going, oh, they’re going to crash. They’re going to crash. And they didn’t and he went on to get that first title. So there’s been so many amazing moments.”

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Max Verstappen still frustrated by Red Bull’s lack of progress in 2024

Verstappen has identified issues with the RB20 that he believes need to be fixed to maintain his title challenge.

His lead in the Drivers’ Championship isn’t impossible to overturn but it would be a real surprise if he dropped off enough for Norris or someone else to catch him.

However, you only have to look at how Verstappen is performing against teammate Sergio Perez to see how good he really is.

Perez was in danger of being dropped over the summer break and is more than 140 points behind Verstappen in the Drivers’ Championship.

He can’t extract anywhere near the same level of performance out of the car and that might eventually cost him his place in the team.