Verstappen ally reveals straight-talking secret to success

Max Verstappen's former performance coach has spilt the beans on a secret behind Red Bull's success.

After years of battling Mercedes for supremacy, the Austrian team and their star driver have now clinched three consecutive drivers' championships, rewriting the record books along the way.

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The Dutch driver's rise to the top has been nothing short of meteoric - debuting at just 17 years old, his exceptional skill was evident from the very beginning.

After a successful stint with Toro Rosso, the junior team to Red Bull, he was promoted to the senior team midway through the 2016 season.

There, he wasted no time in making his mark, winning the Spanish Grand Prix and becoming the youngest race winner in F1 history. The rest, as they say, is history.

In 2021, Verstappen finally dethroned the reigning champion Lewis Hamilton in a dramatic and controversial season finale.

This was followed by an utterly dominant performance in 2022, where he secured 15 victories and ended the season a whopping 146 points clear of his nearest competitor.

But 2023 saw Verstappen reach even greater heights, shattering records with a staggering 19 race wins and an impressive 575 points, more than double the points of his closest rival and Red Bull teammate, Sergio Perez.

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Scanes: Shared vision and open communication

Brad Scanes, who worked with Verstappen as a performance coach for four seasons, including the last three of his championship victories, believes a shared vision and open communication were instrumental to their success.

In the latest episode of the Sky Sports F1 Podcast, he elaborated on the key aspects that fostered a winning atmosphere within Red Bull.

"I think just clarity of vision," Scanes said. "We were all there to achieve the same thing. We were all there to win a world championship and guide Max through that. But also have a good time doing it as well.

"They're a very open and honest group as well, and that suited the way that I like to work as well. So if someone's not happy about something, nothing ever goes unsaid. You sort it out there and then," he continued.

"I really was part of the family. They would invite me to kind of birthdays and stuff while I was in Monaco. I'd be around his, or I'd go out for dinner with his manager or a beer with his dad, without him as well.

"It doesn't go unnoticed that that's a huge part of his success as well. And you extend that group as well because you've got a very close-knit team of engineers around him as well. So his race engineer, his performance engineer and they fit in the same way."

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