Le Mans winner Richard Bradley believes that Max Verstappen has yet to demonstrate his ability to win in inferior machinery and lead a team to the pinnacle of Formula 1.
Bradley predicts that Verstappen will join Ferrari in order to bring back the team’s former glory. Verstappen’s journey from Toro Rosso to Red Bull saw him striving to compete with the dominant Mercedes team, and in 2021, he secured his first World Championship. With Mercedes falling behind and Ferrari experiencing a brief surge, Verstappen and Red Bull have become the dominant force in the sport.
Bradley draws parallels to legendary drivers like Schumacher, Senna, and Hamilton, who achieved greatness by winning in substandard cars and elevating their teams. Schumacher’s success with Ferrari makes Bradley believe that Verstappen will ultimately choose the same path.
“I think that Max is going to end up at Ferrari in a couple of years,” Bradley told On Track GP.
“It wouldn’t surprise me, I think especially if he keeps on winning titles and he starts to get complacent, and people start saying ‘oh, is he the greatest of all time?’ Max is the sort of guy that goes ‘okay, well I’ll do what Schumacher did: I’ll take Ferrari from not being in the position to win, to make them World Champions’.
“The reason I think this is because Max is on the path to greatness, we can all see that, he’s on a meteoric rise, he’s dominant at the minute, he’s had two World Championships in the Red Bull, but we’ve never actually seen him do what defines the true greats.
“And when I say that, we look at [Michael] Schumacher, we look at [Ayrton] Senna, [Lewis] Hamilton, and the one thing that defines all of these guys is that they were able to win in a substandard car and take a manufacturer to a position where they weren’t winning at the time, but then they’re able to bring them back there.
“Schumacher doing it with Ferrari, we had Senna when he was at Lotus, we had Hamilton at McLaren after the the new rules came in in 2009 and then of course with Mercedes.
“Whilst Max is doing exactly what he needs to do in a very, very good team and car, I think he’s going to want to prove himself because Max, there’s no secret, he’s quite a proud person to say the least. And he’s going to want to show that he is one of the true all-time greats. And I can see him wanting to bring Ferrari back to the glory that they had with Schumacher, in the next few years.
“How this might look, I don’t know. When this might happen, we’re not sure. He’s still young and he’s still got a bit of time, but I’d be quite confident that maybe after the next five years, if he’s got to the level of five or so championships, which I think is very real, especially if the rules don’t change until 2026, I think it’s something to keep an eye on.”
