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Ever since Max Verstappen got hold of a car with which he could challenge for the title, there has been no looking back! He won his first F1 championship last season, and with the way things are shaping up this season, Max Verstappen is the favorite to win the title, especially with an 80-point championship lead over Charles Leclerc.
F1 has often seen a benchmark standing above the rest of the grid through the generations. From 1994 to 2004, Michael Schumacher was pretty much the best driver on the grid. Before him, the sport had Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost, preceded by the duo of Niki Lauda and Nelson Piquet.
While Max Verstappen is in an enviable position in the championship right now, it is not the only thing that prompts our chain of thought. His overall career has made us wonder whether Max Verstappen might just be the true successor to Michael Schumacher's throne as the undisputed best driver of his generation.
Ever since Michael Schumacher retired in 2006, that throne has been somewhat unoccupied all these years. With Max Verstappen's rise to prominence, there might be a new heir to Michael Schumacher's F1 throne.
Did Michael Schumacher ever have a true successor?
Michael Schumacher effectively retired at the end of the 2006 F1 season. Although he returned for a stint with Mercedes, he was past his prime by then.
In the 16 years since, unfortunately, no single driver has risen above everyone else. There have been some excellent talents in this period, some of whom might go down as the greats of the sport. None, however, truly stood out over their peers.
In the same period, we can probably narrow it down to three possible contenders for Michael Schumacher's throne:
#1 Fernando Alonso
Fernando Alonso was considered the successor to Michael Schumacher when he became a two-time world champion in 2005-06, beating the German in the process. When the 2007 F1 season started, Alonso was considered to be the gold standard of racing in the sport, with many F1 pundits believing that he would take over as the next benchmark.
The 2007 F1 season put paid to those thoughts and expectations as Alonso imploded at McLaren and lost out to Lewis Hamilton and Kimi Raikkonen in the championship. Since then, the Spaniard has twice come close to winning another title, once in 2010 and once in 2012. The problem for Alonso all these years, especially since he voluntarily left Ferrari in 2014, has been his inability to obtain a seat in a race-winning team.
Having last won a race in 2013, he has not competed at the sharp end of the grid against the best talents for almost a decade now. Luck, politics, or just Alonso not being a good team player, all of this has worked massively against him someway or the other.
In terms of quality, it's fair to say that Fernando Alonso is still driving at a very high level. For the last 16 years of your career, however, if you don't win a championship, that's a massive failure. In terms of driving quality, Alonso could have been Michael Schumacher's true successor but a lack of success takes him out of contention.
#2 Sebastian Vettel
Sebastian Vettel's career could be broadly divided into two halves. The first was from his debut in 2007 to the end of the 2013 season when he hit his peak and was arguably the best driver on the grid. As soon as F1 bid farewell to the V8 engines, things changed. The Turbo Hybrid era was not kind to Vettel. After a bad first year with Red Bull, he decided to emulate his idol Michael Schumacher by switching teams and moving to Ferrari, marking the second half of his career.
It is well documented now that this did not happen as Sebastian Vettel ultimately left Ferrari without a title to his name. By the end of the 2013 season, Vettel had set the foundation for a rather successful career in F1. Had he been successful in maintaining that momentum, he would have been the rightful heir to Michael Schumacher's throne.
#3 Lewis Hamilton
Many F1 pundits and fans do consider Lewis Hamilton to be the greatest driver of all time. The reasoning behind that is purely based on statistics, as Hamilton is the most successful driver in the history of the sport.
Until the 2014 season, however, Hamilton was not considered the best driver on the grid in terms of the pecking order. Prior to that, he was arguably the third-best driver, or worse, on the grid in terms of the pecking order behind Fernando Alonso and Sebastian Vettel. Michael Schumacher, on the other hand, was second-best during his championship-drought time.
This is one of the biggest reasons why Hamilton is not Michael Schumacher's true successor. It is a fact that he gained prominence as the best driver on the grid only after getting his hands on the dominant Mercedes.
This was something that Eddie Irvine once alluded to as well. He said that in the era after Michael Schumacher, based on personal choice and liking, you can pick anyone out of Lewis Hamilton, Fernando Alonso, and Sebastian Vettel as the best as neither of these three were able to establish a clear dominance over the other two.
Max Verstappen beat the benchmark in F1 last season
The 2021 F1 season saw Max Verstappen with the car to compete against Lewis Hamilton, delivering a season for the ages! Many, however, feel Hamilton was wronged in the last race. Although Michael Masi's handling of the situation was undoubtedly far from ideal, Max Verstappen was the better driver that season by some distance.
Despite a rather unlucky streak over the season, Verstappen made lesser mistakes and was more consistent. When a driver has to rise to the top, one of the key checkboxes that needs to be ticked off is taking the crown off the biggest benchmark at the time. The Lewis Hamilton-Mercedes combo was just that and as it turned out, Max Verstappen passed the test with flying colors.
Conclusion
Max Verstappen is currently the best driver on the grid. He was ranked so last season by drivers and team principals alike. He has beaten Lewis Hamilton, the previous benchmark, and is currently the reigning world champion. In terms of stamping his authority on the grid, Verstappen has done that, just like Michael Schumacher did in the 1994 and 1995 F1 seasons.
Since Michael Schumacher's first retirement in 2006, F1 has not had an undisputed best driver. It was always a tussle amongst Alonso, Hamilton, and Vettel. It, however, does appear that with Max Verstappen's triumph over Lewis Hamilton last season, he has proved to be the rightful heir to Michael Schumacher's crown.
