Max Verstappen vs. Michael Schumacher: How are the two F1 drivers similar?

Max Verstappen is battling Lewis Hamilton to win the first title of his career. The season has seen its share of ups and downs and the same is the case with the title protagonists. Both men have had their highs and lows but through it all, the personalities of the two men have slowly come to the forefront.

While Hamilton is more or less a known entity, Verstappen has been a bit of a revelation this season. Single-minded, focused, unrelenting, and arguably too mature for his age, the Dutchman has shown multiple facets of his personality that many didn't know existed.

It is due to these revelations that similarities are now being drawn him and a certain legend from the past. A German who made a rather quiet entrance to the sport but then went on to conquer it like no one else before him.

Yes, we're talking about Michael Schumacher. A former teammate of Max Verstappen's father Jos, but also someone who seems to have had a degree of influence on the 24-year-old's career.

This article takes a look at some of the similarities between Michael Schumacher and Max Verstappen.

---

Max Verstappen vs. Michael Schumacher: How are the two F1 drivers similar?

#1 Made an immediate impact in F1

Max Verstappen made an impact even before he stepped on the grid. Both Mercedes boss Toto Wolff and Red Bull driver development head Helmut Marko realized very early on that he was the next big thing, and went after him with lucrative offers.

The two teams had to battle it out for the young prodigy's services, with Red Bull eventually edging out the German giant.

Michael Schumacher, on the other hand, made such an immediate impact in 1991 by qualifying a mediocre Jordan fifth at Spa that both Benetton and Jordan had to fight a legal battle over his services.

---

#2 Clashed with established drivers early on

Max Verstappen was swiftly promoted to the senior Red Bull team in his second year and would win his very first race with the team that year. It was during this season that Verstappen had a car capable of fighting the best on the grid.

Max Verstappen regularly went up against the likes of Lewis Hamilton, Nico Rosberg, Daniel Ricciardo and Sebastian Vettel. His belligerent driving style and unrelenting nature rubbed a few of them the wrong way as well.

During his initial couple of years at Red Bull, Verstappen would tangle with both Vettel and Lewis Hamilton on multiple occasions as tried to achieve beyond what was possible with the Red Bull.

Michael Schumacher, too, had a similar trajectory. The move to Bennetton allowed him to fight the likes of Ayrton Senna, Nigel Mansell, Alain Prost and others at the sharp end of the grid.

One of his most famous clashes was with Ayrton Senna, which would eventually culminate with the Brazilian legend publicly going up to Schumacher and talking to him about the incident.

---

#3 Driving style scrutinized

It was something that made Michael Schumacher the driver he was. It's the same thing that makes Max Verstappen the driver that he is. It's the driving style that both drivers employed.

Michael Schumacher never gave an inch to his rivals when it came to wheel-to-wheel battles. Did he go over the line on occasions? He sure did, but wherever he could, he would give his rivals the bare minimum that was possible and no more.

Many a time, this driving style was considered unsafe, unsporting even, and because of this, the German would face a fair amount of scrutiny. Max Verstappen, too, has employed a similar "crash or yield" style and taken flak for it.

---

#4 Relentless and tenacious approach

What made Michael Schumacher the machine that would dominate the sport was his single-minded focus. His approach to a race weekend was relentless. Every tenth that needed to be extracted from the car was extracted, and every position that was on the table in the race was grabbed. The focus was always on maximizing the result as much as possible.

Ever since he crashed during qualifying at Monaco in 2018, Max Verstappen has become far more cerebral in his approach. He's been more focused on maximizing returns from every race, and if a win is not on the table, he tries to achieve the best result possible.

Similarly, when Schumacher finished a race in a particular position, everyone knew that was the best result possible with the car.

---

#5 Neither had a media-friendly persona

It's fair to say that Max Verstappen is not a media darling, coming nowhere close to affability with the press as say, Lewis Hamilton or Fernando Alonso.

He has been pretty transparent about this and that does sometimes play a role when stories are written about him in certain publications.

Michael Schumacher too has faced a similar backlash from the media. The media was not his best friend in 1994, when he won his first title against Damon Hill in a questionable manner, or when fell from grace after the intentional collision with Jacques Villeneuve in 1997.

Schumacher never made it a point to bring the media to his side and that would sometimes work against him when things went south.

In many ways, Max Verstappen's first championship battle brings back a lot of memories about the F1 legend that was Michael Schumacher. The German was able to go on and become a seven-time world champion. It will be interesting to see what path Max Verstappen's career will take and what kind of success he is able to achieve.

---

---