Lewis Hamilton says Max Verstappen can "absolutely" beat his records in Formula 1, but the Briton is counting on Mercedes' progress to "slow him down".
Verstappen conquered in Canada last weekend his 41st career win in Formula 1, the Red Bull driver joining the great Ayrton Senna as the fifth most successful driver in the history of the sport.
The Dutchman's seemingly unstoppable forward march this season will likely carry him to his third world title. But Hamilton believes that there is a lot more to come from the 25-year-old.
"Max has been doing an amazing job. He's had such an incredible career so far and he's for sure going to surpass [Senna's number of wins]," Hamilton commented last weekend in Montreal.
"[We're] working on getting the car to where it needs to be so we can slow him down."
Asked whether Verstappen can exceed his own statistics and records in F1, Hamilton said: "He's got a very long career ahead of him so absolutely.
"Ultimately, records are there to be broken. And he's got an amazing team. But as I said, we've got to work harder to try and continue to extend it.
"I hope we get to have, at least within the last period of time in my career, some more close racing."
Verstappen's admitted that reaching Senna's milestone was "incredible", but the Dutchman took a modest approach to the achievement.
"Of course, to tie with Ayrton is something incredible," he said. "I'm proud of that. But I hope it's not stopping here. I hope that we can keep on winning more races."
Red Bull team boss Christian Horner wasn't surprised by his driver's self-effacing public attitude.
"Part of him inside will be quite proud of that," said Horner. "I don't think he's one to show huge emotion. He's a very modest guy. He's very understated, in many ways.
"But I think behind the scenes, it will actually mean quite a lot to him… He's not the kind of guy who's going to go and jump up and down on the podium, and all that kind of stuff."
However, Horner agreed with the widespread view that Verstappen has already gained access to Formula 1's pantheon of greats.
"What we're witnessing with Max is the emergence of another mega talent and you can start to talk about him in the same sentence as the greats now," he said.
"Having matched Ayrton Senna… I thought the [Canadian GP] podium actually was very apt of the last couple of decades of Formula 1 with Max, Fernando [Alonso, second] and Lewis [third] up there.
"He just keeps delivering at such a high level."
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