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Three-time world champion Max Verstappen has made it to the elusive list of Time magazine's 100 most influential people in the world.
The Red Bull driver became the third F1 world champion after Michael Schumacher and Lewis Hamilton to be included in the list, with the German featuring in 2004 and the Mercedes driver in 2020.
The Dutch driver enjoyed the most dominant season in F1 history in 2023, winning 19 out of the 22 completed races and leading his team to their second consecutive Constructor's Championship.
Journalist Sean Gregory wrote about Max Verstappen's inclusion in the list in a Time Magazine column:
"Over the past 12 months, Max Verstappen has won in Miami and Monaco, and Abu Dhabi. He’s won in Japan and Qatar and Austria and Hungary, and other places across the continents. No athlete has enjoyed more victory laps, in more disparate places around the world, than Verstappen, the Formula One driver who has won three straight F1 championships.
"Verstappen, who races under the Dutch flag, is so confident behind the wheel that during at least one race he’s been able to keep an eye on the screens around the track in order to watch the battle going on behind him."
Esteban Ocon chimes in on his 'fiery' rivalry with Max Verstappen
Alpine F1 driver Esteban Ocon stated that he shared a 'fiery' rivalry with Max Verstappen during their junior racing days in karting.
While appearing on the High-Performance podcast, the French driver spoke about the intense nature of their rivalry and their father's involvement. He said:
"It was, to be fair – it was very fiery. Everybody was a little bit scared of Jos and Max at the time because Jos was driving F1 before, so he’s [known] for how fierce and how scary he can be, talking to other young kids and all that on go-kart tracks.
"My dad and myself, we were never scared, because we just wanted to race, we wanted to race hard."
There have been a few instances in F1 as well when Ocon and Verstappen clashed such as Brazil 2018, when the former denied the Red Bull driver a clear win which later led to a physical altercation between the two.
The Alpine driver would hope to have more battles with the three-time world champion in the future and race hard with him as they used to in their karting days.
