Ahh yes, it feels like just yesterday where I could wake up in the morning with a cup of coffee, scroll through my emails, and check to see if a certain infamous Formula 1 driver had crashed yet by heading over to a website dedicated to that express purpose. It was a little sad when Pastor Maldonado took his exit from F1. It felt like we’d all lost something integral, something we could count on.
If you’re missing out on the very specific kind of schadenfreude that only comes by watching someone get paid millions of dollars to destroy one of the most technologically sleek cars in the world, then never fear my friends. Someone new has taken up the torch of The Potentially Most Dangerous Driver On The Grid.
So if you’re interested, hop on over to Crashstappen.com. They’ll keep you updated on the next driver we all love to hate or hate to love, Max Verstappen.
This season, Max Verstappen has been involved in some kind of shenanigans at every single race. In Australia, he spun on his own and lost four places on lap 9. In Bahrain, he crashed in qualifying and therefore started 15th, only to get into a spat with Lewis Hamilton in the race, lose drive, and DNF. And in China, Verstappen ran into not one but two other drivers (Lewis Hamilton and Sebastian Vettel) within the span of five laps.
It’s not a great look.
Verstappen seemed like a shining prodigy when he rocketed into an F1 seat with Toro Rosso, bypassing the typical rungs of the Red Bull Junior Program ladder to replace Jean-Eric Vergne for the 2015 season. He won Rookie of the Year after a wildly promising showing. The next year, after Daniil Kvyat started getting recognized for his rather aggressive on-track actions, Red Bull dropped the driver and promoted Verstappen up to be Ricciardo’s teammate halfway through the season. In his first eight races with RBR, he nailed six top-5 finishes and four podiums. It seemed like this kid could do everything.
But last season was bad. Verstappen retired from half of the first fourteen races, and it’d make sense if he’s starting to worry that this season might be a repeat. At least, that would explain his desperate moves where he really has no business making them.
You have to wonder what Red Bull Racing is feeling about all of this. They dropped one of their drivers to make room for Verstappen on account of Kvyat’s questionable moves, and now Verstappen is doing the same exact thing—except, um, a lot more frequently. I’m personally in the camp that he could have used a few more years in the junior categories to learn from mistakes like these, but… for the time being, I will definitely be checking Crashstappen to see what kind of tomfoolery Max is engaging in.