Newey on Verstappen and other F1 champions: "Max is right up there"

With Ayrton Senna, Alain Prost, Mika Hakkinen and Sebastian Vettel, Newey has worked with some of the greatest drivers in history. He prefers not to compare them, as they drove in different eras and all had their own way of driving and sharing feedback. So the 63-year-old rejects the suggestion that there is anything specific that defines a champion.

Newey on comparing F1 champions

He does say, however, that Verstappen is definitely one of the big names. "Max is right up there," he said in an interview with The Evening Standard. "He’s very calm generally, very measured, he has tremendous reflexes and is a pleasure to work with."

One area where drivers differ greatly in his experience is in the way they give feedback. Vettel was the most elaborate, according to Newey, while Mika Hakkinen's messages were very concise. "Mika didn’t say much and sometimes you had to translate what he was saying, but if you translated those 10 words correctly, they were very insightful," explained Red Bull's Chief Technical Officer. He adds that good drivers know what they want from the car and know how to communicate with their engineer about what they want and how to achieve it.