Christian Horner: ‘Max Verstappen doesn’t crave adulation, he loves his racing’

Christian Horner leans in, pauses and then smiles as he considers what it’s like to manage Formula One’s world champion. It transpires that for all that he is ferociously competitive, Max Verstappen makes for good company. “At Silverstone he will come round for dinner and what impresses me is how good he is with the kids,” says the Dutchman’s Red Bull team principal. “He is just totally at ease with the children. He is genuinely a nice lad.”

This weekend at the Japanese Grand Prix, Verstappen is likely to become a double world champion. He will successfully defend the title he first claimed last year if he wins the race and Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc finishes lower than second. In doing so, after an almost completely dominant season, it will be a statement of authority and a thorough vindication of the faith Horner and Red Bull placed in him when they first put him in an F1 car in 2015 when he was just 17.

In the Red Bull motorhome as the rain at Suzuka batters the roof and the stoical fans in the stands, Horner acknowledges how close he has been to Verstappen for almost all of the young man’s journey, including recounting how he joined him at a Spice Girls show to watch Horner’s wife, Geri, perform.

Eight years on from Verstappen’s debut and with one world championship already under his belt what Horner, who has run Red Bull since it entered F1 in 2005, has observed suggests the 25-year-old has handled it all with remarkable equanimity for one so young and with such a high profile.

“He hasn’t changed despite all the adulation he is receiving,” Horner explains. “You often see personalities change, they become divas. Max is fundamentally the same lad that turned up six years ago, I don’t think he will ever change. He is at