Formula 1 is one of the hardest sports to carve a niche out for yourself in. Look at all the greats, Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, Lewis Hamilton, and Sebastian Vettel, just to name a few. They’ve toiled to stack up the numbers in their favor. And it took them an entire career. But Max Verstappen, according to an ex-F1 champion, has already achieved that status.

For the others, it took years of winning to embed their names in the annals of the F1 history books. But Verstappen has arguably just started ‘winning’. That being said, in the eyes of the 2016 Formula 1 World Champion and Lewis Hamilton’s former teammate, Nico Rosberg, the Dutch lion has already established himself as an all-time legend of this sport.

While speaking on Sky Sports F1’s Any Driven Monday, he said, “He is an incredible driver. I think it’s easy to say even now that’s he’s going to be one of the best of all time, if you look at the statistics he actually even is now.” 

“He’s a double world champion with all of the race wins that he has, more than (Fernando) Alonso.”

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Even though for Rosberg, Verstappen is already one of the greats, a certain racing driver feels that the Dutch driver failed to take a leaf out of the German’s World Title victory in Abu Dhabi to help his teammate secure P2 in the Championship.

Could Max Verstappen have helped Sergio Perez at Abu Dhabi?

Lewis Hamilton almost cost Nico Rosberg his championship at the 2016 Abu Dhabi Grand Prix. Backing him up into 3rd placed Sebastian Vettel while leading the race himself could’ve led to the Brit winning the Championship instead of Rosberg if Vettel had managed to overtake him.

Formula E driver Sam Bird feels that Verstappen could’ve done the same with Charles Leclerc to have helped Perez‘s bid for P2 in the Championship.

On the Chequered Flag podcast, he said, “There’s a specific race I look back at that’s kind of similar, when Nico Rosberg won the World Championship in Abu Dhabi. Max could have done something similar”

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“So he could have slowed down, blocked Charles Leclerc a little bit, they would have had a bit of a fight with DRS. But that would have brought Sergio Perez into the game.”

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After the Brazilian Grand Prix incident and Perez eventually losing out on P2 at Abu Dhabi, is the relationship inside the Red Bull camp really souring?