Verstappen scores 51 like Prost, without breaking a sweat. It's too easy that way

As a good storyteller one should only take note of the greatness of Max Verstappen, who at 26 is already a three-time world champion and continues to collect record after record, reaching a certain Alain Prost at 51 successes in the Mexican GP.

But there is something that jars, that doesn't add up, a feeling of boredom and obviousness that irremediably clashes with the epic narrative that such results would impose. There is in these thirty victories in two years by Max a sense of ease, almost of inflation, numbers that add up to others making a lot of quantity, not that there is no quality, needless to say with an exceptional driver like Verstappen and a fabulous car like the Red Bull, but the total absence of competition makes everything more arid, sad, an end in itself.

We all remember the tears in Monza, in 2000, of Michael Schumacher for having reached Ayrton Senna at 41, that rush of emotion, of mixed feelings, of joy and respect, then in the midst of a very close world championship duel with the then bogeyman Mika Hakkinen, and all after having suffered the Overtaking in Spa. There was fight, there was humanity, warmth.

Here, however, we have a champion who wins without shedding a drop of sweat, and every race is terribly similar to the others. Triumphs in series, like a cold assembly line, without rivals. Verstappen is indeed writing the history of F1, but it is as if it were a story already written. It is a didactic book that illustrates a specific situation, firm, cold, immobile, it is not a novel full of twists and turns into which one can throw oneself headlong.

Red Bull dominance is like Parmenides' being: immobile, indivisible, finite, perfect. But high-speed emotions should arise from contrast, from movement, from struggle. Verstappen himself would need some opponent who would get closer to him, who would hinder him more, who would snatch a few victories here and there, just to make him get his hands a little dirty. The Dutchman would benefit as well as all of Formula 1.

Because this year Max became world champion for the third time, reaching Ayrton Senna in terms of titles won, and has reached Alain Prost in terms of number of successes. In short, he evoked, in total boredom, and with disarming ease, without any resistance, two sacred monsters who, with their duel, with their more than close battles, made entire generations fall in love. An oxymoron in this F1 orphan of its main element: competition.

Antonino Rendina