Red Bull star Max Verstappen is once again leading the Drivers’ Championship although his lead over the rest of the field isn’t quite as emphatic as it was last year.
The likes of Ferrari, McLaren and even Mercedes have closed the gap to Red Bull, putting increasing pressure on Max Verstappen and his teammate Sergio Perez.
Speaking on the Formula For Success Podcast, Eddie Jordan was speaking about the triple world champion.
Max Verstappen is one of the most dedicated drivers on the grid and lives and breathes racing.
Alongside his driving in Formula 1, he spends countless hours on the sim and even competes in online events on the side.
Jordan has now said that he would have banned Verstappen from taking part in an online event during the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix.
While he doesn’t doubt the 26-year-old’s talent, he doesn’t think Verstappen should be dedicating his time to other pursuits when he’s been paid to race for Red Bull.
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Eddie Jordan would have stopped Max Verstappen from sim racing during the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix
For Max Verstappen, two racing events were going on over the weekend of May 19.
The first took place at the iconic race circuit in Imola where Verstappen was looking for a hat-trick of successive victories at the track.
The other was taking place on another iconic circuit at the Nurburgring where he and his online teammates were racing in a 24-hour event.
On the Saturday, Verstappen was pushed to his limits in qualifying and barely set a faster time than the McLaren pair of Oscar Piastri and Lando Norris.
After his duties at the track were finished, he went back to start a four-hour stint on a simulator rig he had brought with him to Italy and from there he decompressed by driving for Team RedLine.
Verstappen’s shift went to plan as you would expect and eight minutes before the lights went green in Italy, he had already achieved his first victory of the day.
Jordan has admitted that if he was in charge of Red Bull in Christian Horner’s position, there would be no way that he would have allowed Verstappen to spend hours before a race he won by less than a second concentrating on simulator racing.
However, when you’re already a triple world champion and arguably the most important cog in the Red Bull machine, you have more flexibility when it comes to your schedule.
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Max Verstappen was a double race winner at Imola this season
Coulthard explained that Verstappen did a four-hour racing stint the night before the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix to which Jordan replied: “I wouldn’t have allowed it if I had been the boss.
“If I’d been Christian [Horner] I’d have said, ‘I’m sorry Max [Verstappen], you’re here, you’re being paid this kind of money to represent the sponsors, the team, everybody associated with the suppliers etc.’
“And I think it’s very hard to have total concentration, certainly I know this from myself because I don’t have that.
“But Max must be a different kind of makeup and I’m seeing the focus that he’s got like we talked about.
“He’s in a different league, isn’t he? You never had any doubt that he was going to win that race, he’s an immense character.”
Verstappen’s future is still something being widely discussed despite having a contract running until the end of 2028.
Mercedes would love to sign Verstappen but the Dutchman would likely ask that he can continue his extracurricular activities if he made the unlikely switch.
Toto Wolff would already give Verstappen more benefits in his contract than Lewis Hamilton, meaning he would probably still be a key part of Team RedLine’s line-up for years to come.
The post ‘Wouldn’t have allowed it’: Eddie Jordan says he would have banned Max Verstappen from one activity this year appeared first on F1 Oversteer.