Categories: F1 News, Reports and Race ResultsToro Rosso

Verstappen never felt pressure stepping up to F1

Max Verstappen says he never felt any pressure stepping up to race in F1 for the first time this season at the age of 17.

Much was made of Verstappen's age when Toro Rosso announced it would be promoting him to a race seat after just one year of racing in F3 after moving up from karts. The move even saw the FIA introduce a mandatory minimum age of 18 for a superlicence to race at the top level.

Despite the scrutiny ahead of his debut, Verstappen told the official Formula One website he never feels he has been under any real pressure this year.

"For me I don’t feel less or more pressure," Verstappen said. "To be honest I never really felt a lot of pressure, also at the start of the year. The first two races you take it a bit easier with overtaking - you want to finish races to get experience. When you get more confidence in the car you can do braver overtakes, and I think that’s getting better and better all the time."

And Verstappen says he takes some of the pressure off himself by accepting he is in a learning year in his rookie season.

Asked for the hardest thing to adjust to in F1, Verstappen replied: "Just learning the car every race weekend.

"I don’t have a lot of experience of the tracks outside of Europe, so that’s also a big thing. The team helps you a lot. It’s just gaining experience - learning every phase of qualifying for example: how to get the maximum out of the tyres, how to set up the car from Q1 to Q2 to Q3."

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Andrew Lewin

Andrew first became a fan of Formula 1 during the time when Michael Schumacher and Damon Hill were stepping into the limelight after the era of Alain Prost, Nigel Mansell and Aryton Senna. He's been addicted ever since, and has been writing about the sport now for nearly a quarter of a century for a number of online news sites. He's also written professionally about GP2 (now Formula 2), GP3, IndyCar, World Rally Championship, MotoGP and NASCAR. In his other professional life, Andrew is a freelance writer, social media consultant, web developer/programmer, and digital specialist in the fields of accessibility, usability, IA, online communities and public sector procurement. He worked for many years in magazine production at Bauer Media, and for over a decade he was part of the digital media team at the UK government's communications department. Born and raised in Essex, Andrew currently lives and works in south-west London.