Hopefully the subtext of that isn’t that people have rushed to judge one Mr M.V.?
I find it hard to settle on an opinion of him. When he first arrived he did what I thought was the right thing: establish a clear reputation as uncompromising and fearless on track. Over time that should have settled a bit; I was expecting him to exercise a little more judgement in terms of when to really dig his heels in.
That didn’t really happen, and we got a volatile mix of brilliance and over-reaching ambition until Monaco 2018. From then on he’s been solidly delivering top performances. A few moments, like the collision with Ocon at Interlagos and his conduct afterwards, but overall just generally obliterating teammates and getting everything out of the car.
Then this year. For the first half I was impressed: still the exceptional driving, this time with a better car, and generally admirably stoic, most notably after Silverstone when the rest of the team lost their heads. But then in the second half the cracks have started to show again: Monza’s crash was just unnecessary, Brazil was deeply unprofessional, and Saudi was a complete mess: the over-aggressive moves in the corners was one thing and entirely predictable, but the braking incident was off the chart. He’s remained largely rational in interviews but the subtext is often very clear. He knows what he’s doing on track, and he doesn’t care what anyone else’s view on it is, including the stewards and the FIA: he will do whatever it takes to avoid losing his grip on the trophy.
A shame, really, because I had quite changed my view of him early in the year. But I think the pressure is just bringing out his true colours again. Oddly I wondered during the early stages of qualifying whether now we’re at the sharp end of things we might see him repeat his once-regular Monaco qualifying errors, and so we did. Regrettably I find myself wanting to see him crack under the pressure this weekend.
