'Special' Verstappen not a realistic example for youngsters

Santino Ferrucci says the "special" example of Max Verstappen is not one which all young drivers should be targeting.

Verstappen was promoted to a race seat at Toro Rosso at the age of 17 and impressed hugely in his debut season, resulting in a promotion to Red Bull after just four races this year. Verstappen's first race for his new team saw him take victory at the Spanish Grand Prix, and only Lewis Hamilton has scored more points than the 18-year-old since his Red Bull debut.

Ferrucci is the same age as Verstappen and got his first taste of F1 machinery during the Silverstone in-season test this week, but the Haas development driver believes Verstappen's is a unique situation.

"I mean, I think everyone will agree Max is special," Ferrucci said when asked by F1i if he is now keen to follow his example of reaching F1 at such a young age. "I got to race against him in F3 so I can say he's a really good driver, really smart and really clever.

"To go from karting to F3 and then to F1 is not something you see every day. The only other driver that comes to mind that did that is Kimi Raikkonen. So it's probably not something in my plans.

"I prefer to progress a little bit more and be a little bit more and stuff like that when I am in the car ... There's no need to rush anything."

After racing against Verstappen in European F3 in 2014, Ferrucci stayed in the championship last year before moving to GP3 with DAMS this season.

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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.