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"Am I the championship?" After winning the 2022 F1 Championship Japan Tournament, 25-year-old Max Verstappen asked the people around him in confusion. The answer is yes. Verstappen not only won the Japanese championship, but also defended the F1 annual championship with 366 points ahead of schedule. Speaking of Verstappen, he has created many "youngest" history, and his relationship with his competitor Lewis Hamilton (Lewis Hamilton ) is also talked about. Some media even believe that Verstappen is the future of racing .
Japanese station won
On October 9, the rain in Suzuka took a whole afternoon, but the racers and audiences were still enthusiastic. The competition was affected by heavy rain, and there were constant accidents after departure. After only three laps, it was stopped by Hongqi. The competition was also suspended for 1 hour and 20 minutes due to weather reasons. By the rules, the game must end within two hours of starting. With only 40 minutes left before the end, the race started again, and several racers set out again after changing their tires. Verstappen is among them, too. Once he left the repair station, he easily surpassed other racers and took the lead. Monaco F1 driver Charles Leclerc (Charles Leclerc) followed closely behind, 4 seconds behind.
As the game progressed, Verstappen's advantage gradually became obvious. He first led Leclerc html for 310 seconds and 15 seconds... In the end, Verstappen was the first to cross the finish line and won by a large gap. Although Leclerc crossed the line in second place, he was fined 5 seconds for a fight with Mexican racer Sergio Perez and fell to third place. Perez won second place.
Vistapan at that time had not thought that he had successfully defended his title. This year's F1 adopts new rules, and if the racer fails to complete 75% of the schedule in the event, the rider will not receive all points. Due to the suspension of the game, Verstappen only ran 28 laps, completing only 52% of the entire race schedule. No one in the field expected Verstappen to win the championship. However, the next second, when International Automobile Federation (FIA) announced that Verstappen won the championship, everyone was shocked, including Verstappen himself. The person in charge explained that the new rule only applies to games that cannot be restarted due to other reasons, so Verstappen still earns 25 points in all points and a total of 366 points. The racers can get up to 112 points in the remaining four stops, but their outstanding performance in this championship allowed Verstappen to lead second-place Perez by 113 points. In the end, Verstappen defended the championship four stops ahead of schedule.
When he learned that he had become the champion, Verstappen asked reporters in disbelief: "Am I a world champion?" When he got a positive answer, he sat down in front of a flag with the words "World Championship" and listened for a while and said, "I feel a little lonely."
has many "youngest" titles
In fact, Verstappen has already led the standings, so it was expected that he won the championship. Verstappen, who won the F1 world championship for two consecutive years, has many "youngest": he is the youngest leading driver, the youngest fastest lap driver, the youngest scoring driver, the youngest Grand Slam champion and the youngest sub-station champion. For Verstappen, racing is what he was born to do. His father is also an F1 racer and his mother is a successful kart player. "Growing up, racing was inseparable from me, but my parents never forced me to drive, which was completely my personal idea. Once, when I went to the karting stadium, I saw a young child driving. At only 4 and a half years old, I immediately called my father who was racing in F1 in Canada and said I would also become a racer," Verstappen recalled to reporters.
16 years old, Verstappen joined the Red Bull Junior Team. Six days later, he was selected as the driver of the Red Bull Second Team 2015 season.When he participated in the 2015 Australian Grand Prix for the first time as a regular racer, Verstappen was only 17 years old and 166 days old, becoming the youngest driver to participate in the World Championships. To this day, he still holds the record of the youngest driver to compete in the Formula 1 Championship . The following year, Verstappen joined the Red Bull Racing team . At the 2016 Spanish race, he made his debut for the Red Bull Racing team. In addition to winning the race, he won a more important title: the youngest sub-station champion in history. That year, Verstappen was only 18 years old.
When most teenagers are still worried about the exam and preparing to get a driver's license, Verstappen has competed with world-leading racers such as Hamilton , Jenson Button (Jenson Button ), Felipe Massa, and his strength is unstoppable. "At the age of the time, I think I'm very experienced. Of course, if I had the experience now, I might have done something different, but (at that time) it was normal." Verstappen added, "What can you expect when you were a teenager? You have to make mistakes, you have to learn. At that time, I was not fighting for the world championship, I was working hard to learn a lot."
"love and kill" with rival Hamilton
On the way to the championship, Hamilton was Verstappen's biggest threat. Hamilton played for Mercedes and is considered one of the most successful drivers in F1 history. Hamilton won the 7th world championship in 2020, but starting from 2021, Verstappen won the championship in place of Hamilton. On many occasions, Verstappen must answer questions about "compete with Hamilton." After all, in the F1 world, there can only be one "king".
When it comes to the relationship with Hamilton, Verstappen once calmly said: "We are what our competitors should be. We won't eat together, but that's good. We all have a competitive spirit, on the track we try to beat each other, outside the track, we try to respect each other. So far, there are indeed some tense moments (between us), but overall, everything is good."
Lewis Hamilton.
However, since the start of the 2021 season, Verstappen and Hamilton have been "fighting". Once at the British Grand Prix, Hamilton's car clamped the rear tires of Verstappen's car; the most recent time was at the 2021 Italian Grand Prix, at a turn, Verstappen's car crashed into Hamilton's car, and both of them withdrew. The outside world has always believed that the two were in a "hateful" relationship. Hamilton commented on Verstappen's driving skills in public, believing that the young driver was driving too hard and called Verstappen a "madman." After the two collisions, although Verstappen did not respond to media issues positively, Red Bull Racing boss Christian Horner (Christian Horner) criticized Hamilton in the media, and even Verstappen's father joined in the accusation against Hamilton.
Older idols want to make history while young newbies try to prove themselves, which naturally leads to friction. Verstappen became the champion of the 2022 F1 Championship, and everyone is waiting and seeing how their relationship develops in the future.
News and pictures source: CNN, the Gentlemen journals, sbnation, some pictures are from the Internet
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