Verstappen teases plans for team ownership in future

Red Bull's Max Verstappen has hinted that he may be interested in going into team ownership in the future, once his time behind the wheel in Formula 1 comes to a conclusion.

That's a long way off, of course, with the 25-year-old Dutch driver looking to extend his reign at the top for a decade or more to come, and every indication that he's just getting started.

With two world championships in the bag and a third already a near certainty, that could soon see him catch and pass the all-time record of seven titles held jointly by Lewis Hamilton and Michael Schumacher.

But Verstappen has also been vocal about his complaints about some directions of the sport, such as the added number of races on the schedule and the extra work load involved in the sprint weekends.

He's already hinted that if he doesn't like where F1 is going he might quit while he's still young enough to launch a new career, with team ownership one of the things that might appeal to him.

He has ideas for combining that with his passion for sim racing, as he explained in an interview last week with CNN Sport's Amanda Davies.

• Read also: Verstappen leading Red Bull to 'incredible' place in records

“I maybe want to have my own race team,” he confirmed. “I already of course started at a bit with Verstappen.com Racing; it’s integrated already in real racing plus the sim racing part.

“I love my sim racing. Some people think it’s just a game, but it’s not,” he continued. “I have a lot of passion in that and I have a lot of plans for the future to build something around that to maybe bring some races to the real world.

"There are so many opportunities in that, which I want to try and achieve, which I’m working on already," he added. But becoming a real world F1 team principal is definitely not in his plans.

“It’s a lot of traveling, and you’ve already done that as a driver,” he argued. “So I definitely don’t want to do it again as a team principal.”

Right now, Verstappen is focused on winning his third consecutive title - something previously only achieved by Juan Manuel Fangio, Michael Schumacher, Sebastian Vettel and Lewis Hamilton.

There's also the possibility that Red Bull could win every race in 2023, an unprecedented achievement. "Going unbeaten a whole season will be very difficult,” he accepted.

“I always believe in myself. I think that’s important, that’s the most important. And I believe in the car. I believe in the team, I believe in all the people involved," he said. "So I think we have a good shot at it.

“I’m here at the moment trying to achieve everything I can,” he said. “I like to be in front. I like to be in front of everyone else, and that’s what I enjoy the most.

“It’s what you want to do, what you want to achieve. This is why I love the sport. I love, of course, driving to the limit, but I love winning," he added, while once again hinting of having plans beyond his time in F1.

“I try to, of course, give everything I have to that but I also know there’s much more to life than only F1," he said. “Once I’m done in F1, I want to just enjoy my life and do other things.

Unlike his Red Bull predecessor Sebastian Vettel, Verstappen seems to have little interest in the history of the sport and suggested that once he retires, he will look back without a second backwards glance.

"It’s not something probably I will look back to when I’m 60 or 70," he confessed. "What happened in Formula 1 is done. It is what it is. I mean, it’s written down.

"It’s probably not something you care about too much because that’s something that has happened earlier on in your life, which you’ve worked for a long time," he explained. "Yeah, that’s done.”

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