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Interview with 'child prodigy' racing driver Verstappen in The Daily Telegraph where he comments on the last public appearance of 'El Sallvador':

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Max Verstappen exclusive interview: 'I just love driving fast... I try to be as straightforward as I can'

Max Verstappen is not the type to hold much faith in forces beyond his control, but he willingly makes an exception for Johan Cruyff.

By the time he was introduced to the peerless purveyor of total football, he was 18 and on the fringes of his own superstardom, while Cruyff was dying from lung cancer. But their one meeting, during Formula One’s winter testing in 2016, made an indelible impression on the sport’s most precocious talent.

“He was already sick, but still really positive,” Verstappen reflects. “He told me, ‘It feels like I am 2-1 ahead in the first half. Now we need to finish the second half.’ Three weeks later, he died. It was emotional. He was one of the biggest heroes in football, especially in Holland. He was such a nice guy, not arrogant at all. He was here at F1 just to enjoy it. A lot of people come to this sport just to be seen, but he wanted to spend time on understanding how we worked.”

A couple of months after that poignant meeting between two Dutch icons of different generations, Verstappen seized his maiden grand prix victory in Barcelona, the city where Cruyff was cremated, and where his greatness endured in the memory of the “Dream Team” that he led to four straight La Liga titles in the early Nineties.

If the young driver needed any more suggestions of the hidden hand of providence, he had only to glance at the stopwatch. The win had stopped at one hour, 41 minutes, 40 seconds. “Look at that time written down: 14, 14,” he says. “That was his number as a player. Crazy.”

It is a stiflingly hot afternoon here on the outskirts of Budapest, where Verstappen, F1’s man of the moment, goes in search tomorrow of his third win in four races. The huge timber-frame Red Bull motorhome where we sit is quite the creation – the first in the paddock to be fashioned solely from sustainable materials – but it is the 21-year-old driver across the table who is the most prized property of all. Verstappen is not just blindingly fast, but utterly fearless. At Hockenheim last weekend, he achieved the rare distinction of winning a race despite spinning his car full circle en route. The madness of that race, with its dizzying whirl of crashes, collisions and unscheduled pit stops, was the type of stage for which he was made.

Not that Verstappen is consciously trying to revive past glories. He freely admits that as a child, he had no heroes. There were no posters of champion drivers festooning his walls, no idols on whom he would model his karting style. It is what makes his reverence for Cruyff, whose biography is among the few books he has read, so unusual. “I always find it difficult to judge someone if I haven’t met the guy before,” he says. “To me, a hero can only be someone I’ve met or spent time with. I cannot admire someone if I’ve no idea of who he actually is.”


It also explains why he is so reluctant to lavish extravagant accolades upon Lewis Hamilton. While the reigning five-time world champion is, by common consent, the finest driver of his generation, Verstappen finds it a stretch even to go that far. “Lewis has won many championships, but that doesn’t define ‘great’,” he argues. “He’s undoubtedly one of the best who has ever done it. But really, to say that he’s the best of his generation? I don’t know. Maybe it’s Fernando Alonso. He could have won seven, eight world titles, if he had been at the right team.”

The liveliest debate this summer is the question of whether Verstappen, if given the same all-conquering Mercedes machinery, would beat Hamilton. The Dutchman is over-performing at Red Bull to such an extent that in Austria in June, he lapped Pierre Gasly, his own team-mate. Christian Horner, Red Bull’s team principal, has already stoked the fires by backing his man in a straight fight with Hamilton. The likelihood, sadly, is that we shall never know, given Hamilton’s aversion to any partnership with a potential usurper at this late stage of his career, but Verstappen is doing his best at a rival garage to put a dent in Mercedes’ supremacy.

Ahead of tomorrow’s Hungarian Grand Prix, he lies 63 points adrift of Hamilton, a sizeable gulf but a respectable one, given that the Silver Arrows started the season with five consecutive one-two finishes. With a little extra pace over a single flying lap, Verstappen believes, Red Bull – powered by Honda engines that just two years ago were the laughing stock of the grid – could yet pose a genuine threat. “Mercedes are clearly still the dominant force, but we are closing in,” he says. “We can give them a hard time. We already have the edge in some areas: in strategic calls, in pit stops. If we can make another small jump in qualifying, then we can make it really difficult for them.”


It is hard to appreciate the dimensions of Verstappen-mania until you attend one of his races. At the Alpine circuit of Spielberg, 620 miles from his hometown of Hasselt, on the border between Holland and Belgium, an entire grandstand has been given over to his Dutch disciples. On the drive to Spa-Francorchamps, deep in the Ardennes forest, the path is lit by lurid orange flares. Even here in Hungary, Verstappen remains the star turn. To top it all off, F1 owners Liberty Media have chosen to cash in on the “Max factor” by reinstating the Dutch Grand Prix at Zandvoort next year.

He handles such fervour with impressive calm, ascribing it partly to the dip in fortunes of the Dutch football team. “It’s getting bigger and bigger, but I maybe had a bit of luck, in that when I got into F1 the national team were not doing so well,” Verstappen says. “Then, when I made the jump from Toro Rosso to Red Bull, I was suddenly fighting for podiums and wins. When you are the first driver from your country in contention for wins, you suddenly become quite a bit more popular.”

Through every step of his rise from karting, where he won 68 of his first 70 races, to the sunlit uplands of F1, he has been accompanied by his redoubtable father, Jos. Verstappen Snr carved out a worthy career himself at this level, as team-mate to Michael Schumacher at Benetton, but his abiding preoccupation since has been to shepherd Max to the top. He is renowned for a fearsome temper, once refusing to talk to his son for seven days to convey his displeasure at a karting manoeuvre. Max, at least, seems now to recognise the benefits, rather than the setbacks, of some tough love.


“Sometimes we can be quite hard on each other in our comments, but that can be a good thing,” he says. “You need disagreement, to work out what you can do better. I never mind if he’s around. We have been through so much, and this is where we wanted to be when we were back in go-karting. It’s great to live it together.”

He foresees none of the same dangers that befell Hamilton, who sacked his father Anthony as his manager in 2010, after the relationship grew too suffocating. “My relationship with my dad is different, because he has done it himself. He’s not talking b-------.”

Verstappen, a talent born to his craft, is not disposed to too many exotic pursuits beyond the track. When I ask how he ever escapes racing, he replies, happily: “By racing again, online. I do a lot of simulator racing at home. My sim rig is right next to my TV in the living room.”

He lives in Monte Carlo, like so many F1 stars behind him, but besides the odd thrash around the harbour on the jet-ski, he has little time for the Riviera’s other temptations. The day after his triumph in Germany, he was back in his virtual paradise. “I can drive really well on a simulator, but I’m not the best, so for me to go up against the guys who are is a great challenge to have. It motivates me to find even more within myself.”

Cruyff, from whose story he has drawn such inspiration, was one who, for all his artistry, advocated the virtue of simplicity in football. Verstappen regards F1, even with all its brain-addling technicalities, in the same way. “Cruyff didn’t overcomplicate things,” he says.

“Ultimately, football is played with a ball and feet. I see F1 like that. I need to jump in the car and drive as fast as I can. I have a throttle, a brake pedal and a steering wheel. Saying that you need to be at the perfect body temperature, or that you need to drink exactly the right amount of water, I hate that stuff. I’m not doing anything differently from when I was in go-karting. I just love driving fast. All these theories, they don’t mean anything to me. I try to be as straightforward as I can.”

It is the curse of many prodigies that they miss out on the pleasures of a conventional upbringing. And yet Verstappen, for all that he rewrites the records with almost every race he starts, does not regret anything. “My life is racing,” he says, adamantly. “I definitely didn’t miss out of any partying, either. Winning on Sunday was my party.” Therein lies the joy of watching Verstappen: the unvarnished enthusiasm, the sheer love of what he does. For him and for F1 itself, long may those feelings last.

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/formula...clusive-interview-just-love-driving-fast-try/

 

Never forget, never forgive.

 

Very good player! Hitting the post near the end of 78 final or else ...He surely could understand what Robben felt like. Obviously he joined JC in a new team in heaven now!

 

Jan des Bouvrie died today. I went to school with his daughter Nicole.

RIP

 

So remember when I told you guys I sometimes have dreams that come true.
Well last night I had a very clear, lucid dream.
I dreamt a high ranking general or politician was assassinated at a military parade or political rally (or some type of public event).

I dont know what country it was in. It couldve been Europe, US or even Russia (or any other country).
The killer had a really deranged look on his face. So deranged that it startled me and woke me up from my sleep.
It was unclear if the assassination attempt was successfull or not.
It looked to me like the killer either had a large knife or a gun. Or both.

I didnt know what thread to put this in so I put it here.
@Orange14 I hope its okay I posted that here, if not then you can delete it.

Lets see if it comes true

 

ALS claims another athlete

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/f...Sheffield-United-Jamaica-striker-dies-35.html

 

Peter de Vries shot in Amsterdam. Brought to hospital in serious condition. I hope he makes it, but I could see this coming from a mile away

https://www.telegraaf.nl/video/1216152060/beelden-peter-r-de-vries-neergeschoten-in-amsterdam

 

I hate to say it but the suspect and his associates are from the Moroccan-Muslim circle. The so called Mocro Maffia.

This can get ugly.

 

The 2 suspects are a Polish man and a Rotterdammer. That tells me most likely the Polish guy was recruited (assuming cops have the right shooter)

 

According to AD.nl

 

Mocro-mobster indeed
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ridouan_Taghi

This can get ugly, contribute to an upcoming civil war.

And don't rule out help from state actors (not the state Morocco, to be clear).

 

Radio 538 and NPO are doing specials on this tonight around 6 or 7pm

https://www.538.nl/

https://www.nporadio1.nl/