Jenson Button believes Max Verstappen faces an era that is harder to progress, as he has “annihilated” his recent Red Bull teammates on the path of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.
Verstappen is a moment in the drivers’ championship after completing in the two most sensible of the last 4 races, winning one of the two rounds at Silverstone. The 22-year-old has risen to the podium in all the races he has finished so far, and only once in third place, while his teammate Alex Albon has the most productive of the season in fourth place, and 2009 world champion Button says the Hole Between the Two is a challenge for Verstappen.
“Alex is far from Max,” Button said on the Australian Grand Prix’s ‘In the Fast Lane’ podcast. “It’s hard for (Max) because she doesn’t have a competitive teammate now. He’s alone. He probably can’t make that much progress because his teammate is rarely very where he is in terms of pace.
“When your teammate is a moment away from you, which is what it is, you don’t have the tendency to pay attention to their settings and their settings work, so you’re essentially a car team, making it more difficult. He looks at the Mercedes and I think that frustrates him. I think Silverstone was amazing, what a wonderful result, but then, Barcelona, you can hear the frustration in his voice on the radio. You just can’t challenge them because you do. don’t have the car under it.
“So it’s hard for him, but he just has to do the most productive task he can with what he’s got. You compare it to his teammates from the last two years, I mean, he just eliminated them. I haven’t noticed that in motorsport for a long, long time, probably in the days of Ayrton Senna and Michael Schumacher.
“I don’t think there’s a driving force that wiped out your teammate like you’ve done for a long time. So he’s doing a remarkable task and I’d like to see him take on Lewis (Hamilton) in a championship fight. These two, in the most sensible part of their game, that’s what we all need to see, but will it ever happen? I don’t know, I don’t know.”
Button ran alongside Hamilton in McLaren from 2010 to 2012, and said Valtteri Bottas had to put Mercedes in his for a chance to win the title.
“Lewis is a very undeniable pilot, which is impressive to see,” he said. “He never plays, which is great, most drivers do, and I’ve played, you know, I think you have to when you’re up against someone like Lewis. Fernando (Alonso) when we were teammates … Oh, wow! I mean, they were back-and-forth games all the time. No one has ever noticed, and there are things we’ll probably never be able to communicate about, but it was a laugh – it was great and that’s what kept the emotion.
“But with Lewis, it’s simple. It’s really fast. So it’s actually hard to run into someone like that, and I guess all Valtteri can do is put the team behind him and be a real team player. That’s what really hurt Lewis when I joined McLaren, it was essentially Lewis’s team. I had won the world championship with them, and the only way I knew I could get an equivalent remedy was to spend all the time imaginable with the team and do I’m sure I was also part of that team, and they respect me as much as they did with Lewis. Then you just have to pass out and hammer in every race.
‘The challenge is with Lewis, however, it’s hard because you beat him in a race, you drowned and you see his head fall, and it’s like, wow, they gave it to me, his head fell.’ And then, the next week, he ends up dating and surprises you. I wish I could get inside his head and perceive him as an individual, because the maximum drivers are not like that, and I don’t know why. I don’t know how you can put an end to that negative feeling and negative reviews you had last week and suddenly the following week amazes you, and is an absolutely different person. So, yes, it’s interesting. “
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