Pérez is not disadvantaged alongside Verstappen: "They said that same thing to me, but that was bullshit"

When you think back to the most outspoken drivers to have competed in Formula One in recent decades, names like Jacques Villeneuve and Eddie Irvine quickly come to mind. Where Villeneuve managed to take a world title, Irvine narrowly missed out on his top prize in the 1999 season. Michael Schumacher's former teammate does see the similarities between Schumacher and Max Verstappen.

Irvine drove at Ferrari from 1996 through 1999 as a teammate of the then two-time world champion, Michael Schumacher. The Northern Irishman failed to win a race in his first three seasons at Ferrari, while Schumacher competed for the world title in 1997 and 1998. In 1999, Irvine won the opening race of the season, and after Schumacher broke his leg in the middle of the season, at the Silverstone circuit, Irvine suddenly emerged as a title contender.

In the end, Irvine won four races that season and was two points short of knocking Mika Häkkinen off the throne. In Japan, he finished third, behind the returning Schumacher, but even with a second-place finish and equal points to Häkkinen, Irvine would have missed out on the title, as the Finn had taken one more victory in 1999. Irvine never made a secret of the fact that he could not match the talent of his German teammate.

Verstappen wins on talent, and not thanks to preferential treatment

In an extensive interview with the Italian La Gazzetta dello Sport Irvine explains why Verstappen currently remains far out of reach of the competition: "Because he has now mastered everything. He has always been very fast, but at the beginning of his career he made too many mistakes. That happened to Michael (Schumacher, ed.) too," Irvine remembers. "This kind of driver operates at an extreme level, with a very small margin for error. Now Max has the best car, with which he does not have to race at 99.99999 percent as before, but only at 99 percent, and that makes a difference. The Red Bull is incredible, but there is a world of difference between him and Sergio Pérez," observes the 57-year-old.

Irvine immediately seizes the moment to explain that Pérez doesn't have to complain about how he is treated within the team. "When I was in Maranello, they also said that Ferrari favored Schumacher alongside me, but that was bullshit. Of course, they gave it to him first if there was a new engine or floor, but his talent was also huge. Verstappen is the same way. Now that he has won two titles, he no longer feels pressure and does what he feels like doing."

According to the former driver of Jordan, Ferrari, and Jaguar, we can expect many more Verstappen successes for the time being. "Yes," the businessman responds when asked if Verstappen reminds him of Schumacher. "Max was very aggressive and not always correct in the past, but that is no longer the case. He is still tremendously fast, but he now knows how to wait for the right moment to initiate his actions. I don't see who could upset him in the near future."

Statistics have lost their value

The outspoken Northern Irishman also commented on the fact that Verstappen has now won more Grands Prix than three-time world champion Ayrton Senna. "Those are meaningless comparisons, there are many more races now, and there is a different point system. The numbers are not worth anything anymore, zero. In the past it was difficult to win: there were a lot of technical problems, and then it could work out to your advantage or disadvantage, but you drove fewer races. There were fourteen or fifteen races on the calendar."

Irvine also briefly cites that today's cars are very different from those of the 1990s. "Now the drivers work hard, they race more weekends, the cars are heavy and look like Group C cars (a type of sports car, ed.), whereas our Formula 1 car looked more like karts. Since then, the number of races has almost doubled and the points system has changed. Those statistics are nothing more true. And they did it at the wrong time: if they had used this points system in 1999, I would have been world champion."