Verstappen shares Red Bull anecdote: ‘I had to take a step back’

The transition from Toro Rosso to Red Bull was quite a change. At the time, 18-year-old Max Verstappen was surrounded by a larger team.

For Jos, however, this meant that he could do less and less to support his son: "Initially, everything went quite smoothly. But as he gets older, you notice that you have to step back a little more. I sometimes struggled with that," said the 53-year-old about that.

Although it was not easy to take a step back from his son, he accepted it: "On the other hand, it's part of the process. Initially, he would ask me: 'Can you help me out?' How you put in effort, how you deal with the team, you name it all. But a year later, when he made the switch to Red Bull, I was asked to take a step back."

"I also think it was healthy. You're at a top team and naturally you have good people around you. And that actually went pretty naturally. I saw it, I felt it as well," the Dutchman concluded.

For Max himself, it was not exactly a dramatic step either. He explained: "It's not that he was completely absent. Of course, I had the meetings with the team. I was 18 years old, but afterward you come back and then you discuss it. Like, we're going to try this or that."

During those first years with the team from Austria, Jos still helped his son in many areas. But it was noticeably different from the Dutchman's first F1 season, when he competed for Toro Rosso.

"At that point, of course, I was still quite inexperienced. So he helped with driving tips. You look at everything, and my father does too. And then of course you discuss it. He was not as present as in the early years, like in the pitbox. At Toro Rosso, my father would sometimes go to the car," Max finally said about that.