Max Verstappen’s successes are both on and off the track. In addition to an impressive victory and significantly closing the gap with his rival Charles Leclerc in the championship, the Dutchman was elected Sportsman of the Year at the Laureus World Sport Awards this Sunday.<\/p>\n
\u00ab I am very happy, of course, but it has represented a lot of work and years of preparation. I am incredibly proud. I have dreamt of standing on the top step of the podium and winning the championship since I was little. I said to my father, “We made it, that’s why we have worked all these years, and now we are here, both of us, with all these memories, all these years of traveling through Europe, to reach this goal and we have succeeded.”<\/p>\n
“I am the first Dutch driver to win the World Championship, so the reaction from the press and fans in the Netherlands has been fantastic, it’s something we will never forget. It means a lot to be honored with this award, one of the most prestigious in the world, so I am incredibly happy,” he said.<\/p>\n
He thus joins Michael Schumacher (2002 and 2004), Sebastian Vettel (2014), and Lewis Hamilton (2020) in winning this award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The Dutchman has become the fourth Formula 1 driver to receive this award.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":89,"featured_media":34262,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,1749],"tags":[941],"class_list":["post-6775","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-f1","category-news","tag-verstappen"],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\n