Max Verstappen Admits He Was Emotional Saying Goodbye To Dominant RB19

Posted on December 22, 2023 | by Charley Williams It can be an emotional time saying goodbye to your loved ones… especially if that loved one has provided you with 19 out of 23 wins in one year, helped you break an excessive amount of records and guided you through one of the most dominant years in F1 history.  Yeah, we would be emotional too ???? It’s no doubt that Max Verstappen was the driver of the year, achieving the unthinkable. 19 wins, 12 pole positions, 21 podium finishes, over 1,000 laps led, six hat-trick wins and 575 points scored. Though this dominance doesn’t lie entirely in the hands of Verstappen, we have to give the incredible RB19 some credit, too. The man vs machine debate didn’t matter, as both of them eloquently glided through this season without a hitch. It’s no surprise he’ll miss this car. Talking on the 5 Live Chequered Flag Podcast, Max admitted this “definitely hit me a bit on the inlap” of the Abu Dhabi season finale. “The last few laps of the race where… you’ve been driving constantly race to race, you always want to do the best you can, you want to try and optimise the car, you want to win the race of course if possible. “But yeah, with a couple of laps to go, I knew that I was not going to do the test after the race, so I knew that these were going to be my last few laps in the car which has, of course, been very good to me, so I was just looking around a bit… “I know, of course, it’s not that dissimilar to last year’s car from the inside, but you know, your cockpit, you have shared so many moments together even though it’s not a person.” He continued: “It’s just a lot of nice memories, and I was like, last few laps that I’m ever sitting competitively in this car, so that did hit me. “Then, standing on the podium when the national anthem was played, I was remembering the season that we’ve had, so yeah… a few little emotional thoughts, I think, at the time.” ???? We wonder if the 2024 car will be just as dominant!