Verstappen Era Confirmed: F1 Dominance Reaches New Heights

Andrea Stella hails Max Verstappen’s historic 2024 season, underscoring his unparalleled dominance and the longevity of his exceptional success.

McLaren F1 team principal Andrea Stella praised Max Verstappen’s fourth consecutive world championship title. The Italian emphasized that such an achievement and consistent success are anything but a coincidence.

“Let me express my congratulations to Max Verstappen for his four consecutive world championships,” Stella stated. “I believe this title confirms that Max is one of the greatest drivers in Formula 1 history.”

“This is an important title for him because, perhaps in the past, like last year, people might have thought it’s easy to win races when you have the best car.”

“But it is never easy to win with such longevity. There are always countless reasons why things can go wrong, and I think, even last year, both the driver and the team were operating at an extremely high level.”

“This year, when he often didn’t have the best car, what he managed to achieve on weekends without the best equipment confirms that we are in the Max Verstappen era in recent years, and he fully deserves what he is accomplishing.”

Norris “could compete” starting from Miami

Stella pointed out that McLaren’s delay was largely due to the start of the season, when the MCL38 was not yet developed and Red Bull’s RB20 dominated the opening races. He also wanted to highlight McLaren’s and Lando Norris’s successes more than their shortcomings.

“If we exclude the first few races of the season before we introduced the upgrades in Miami, we see that our trajectory in the drivers’ championship suggests that Lando could compete with Max.”

“This is one of the previously unthinkable achievements we must positively acknowledge at McLaren, and when I say unthinkable, I mean unthinkable considering the situation we were in just 18 months ago.”

“At the same time, by engaging in this pursuit, I think we’ve learned a lot. We’ve learned as a team. We’ve learned how to win races. We’ve also learned that, sometimes, to win races, you need to adjust your approach to competition.”

“This season, we had situations like Canada and Silverstone where we could have won, or Monza, and we gained valuable insights as a team.”

“If we look at Lando’s adaptations to competition, even wheel-to-wheel with Max, I think he learned very quickly, from where he was in Austria to Austin, and then just a week later in Mexico.”

“I am very proud of how quickly Lando capitalizes on situations he experiences on the track and, to some extent, even off the track, to become an increasingly effective driver.”

“I’m not sure this is sufficiently recognized externally, for some reason. People focus on missed opportunities rather than acknowledging that Lando is on an upward trajectory, and he was at the level once McLaren provided equipment capable of winning races to keep up with Verstappen.”