Karting is a crucial aspect in how it shapes a driver’s Formula One career. Before Max Verstappen was fighting for the championship against Lewis Hamilton in 2021, he was fighting for a karting championship back in 2012.
It was quite shocking to see the similarities between his F1 title fight and his karting championship battle; both of them had incredibly controversial endings.
In 2021, Hamilton and Verstappen collided with each other on numerous occasions, but what is surprising, or rather unsurprising to see is that Max had a crash with his rival during his karting days in a championship-deciding race. In a documentary, the Red Bull driver and his father look back at the 2012 karting championship. It was a title-deciding race, but things didn’t go their way, and Jos Verstappen reveals how frustrated he was after Max lost the title.
Jos said, “That was in Sarno, Max’s first race in a geared kart and that was the world championship,” Max said, “It certainly did not go as planned there.” Jos added, “He wins the pre-final with a 2.5-second lead, He was so incredibly fast, so he should have won that easily. In the final, he is overtaken by number two in the first round.”
Verstappen added, “I immediately wanted to catch up with him, but that did not work out well in the end. The final had 26 rounds, so I could have waited easily. I had done so much for that race. Time and energy. And I was so mad. I thought it was such a dumb move. When it happened I ran away. I started to tear down the tent. I threw everything in the bus. I was so downcast. Max was crying,” Jos concluded.
