How Verstappen recovered from rock bottom

When he crashed out of Monaco Grand Prix final practice 12 months ago, Max Verstappen had reached the lowest ebb of a run of errors in the first part of the 2018 Formula 1 season. But a change in approach means he returns to the race best-placed to beat Mercedes

Jonathan Noble May 22, 2019, 8:54 AM

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Max Verstappen heads to this weekend's Monaco Grand Prix as the Formula 1 driver with perhaps the best (although slim) chance of ending Mercedes' clean sweep of 2019 so far. It's almost hard to believe that 12 months ago many were questioning whether he really had what it took to be up there with F1's greatest.

Sure, everyone had been made aware of Verstappen's combination of dazzling speed, aggressive overtaking and defensive style, all of which made him such a great racer. But his unnecessary final practice crash in Monaco last year - which put him out of qualifying and handed teammate Daniel Ricciardo an open goal to give Red Bull the win on a weekend it clearly had the best package - prompted a lot of questions about his temperament.

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Author Jonathan Noble

Jonathan Noble is Motorsport.com’s Formula 1 editor. Having graduated from University of Sussex Jonathan worked for sports news agency Collings Sports reporting on F1, F3, touring cars and other sports, with articles appearing in The Daily Telegraph, The Independent, Reuters, Autosport and other publications. In 1999 he moved to Haymarket Publishing to become a senior editor at Autosport Special Projects, and one year later he became Autosport’s grand prix editor. In 2015 he moved to Motorsport Network, becoming the F1 editor for Motorsport.com. He is also a member of the Guild of Motoring Writers, and sits on the FIA Media Council.

Jonathan has won multiple awards for journalism - in 1991 he was the winner of the Guild of Motoring Writers’ Sir William Lyons’ Award for young journalists, in 2010 he was awarded the Outstanding Individual accolade for consumer journalism in the Haymarket wards, in 2011 he won Haymarket’s Scoop of the Year, and in 2018 he was awarded a prestigious Medaglia d’Oro at the Lorenzo Bandini Awards for his contribution to F1 journalism.