F1: Villadelprat says Verstappen better than Hamilton

Max Verstappen has been schooling Lewis Hamilton for 2 straight years, and former Benetton team manager Joan Villadelprat says Verstappen is better.

Villadelprat believes the British driver is no longer at his rival’s level.

Speaking about the rivalry of the two drivers in an exclusive interview with PlanetF1.com coming into the United States Grand Prix Villadelprat said he reckons Max Verstappen is so far clear of the rest, that the Red Bull may not even be as dominant a car as one might imagine.

“No,” he said bluntly, when asked if he believes Hamilton and Verstappen are of the same level.

“Lewis is making mistakes.

“The key thing is we don’t know how good is the Red Bull. Because you can compare the Mercedes car as [George] Russell is good, and he’s there with Hamilton. You can’t do that with Red Bull.

“Red Bull is Max and Checo [Perez] is a second behind, and he is not a bad driver, he’s a very quick driver!

“Maybe the way that Red Bull has developed the car, maybe the way that Max is asking things, maybe what you do to the car to make Max quicker is completely against what Checo wants.”

Adding to the hypothetical, Villadelprat was asked whether he believes Verstappen would come on top if he and Hamilton were put into the same car.

“I think, today, yes,” he said.

“I think today he’s got such confidence.

“The body language, what you see, the way he approaches the weekend, the way he points the car, the way he does the first lap. Because Max, in one lap, he’s there, bam, that’s it.

“That’s his confidence, he’s got the confidence now that he is untouchable, when an F1 driver, a World Champion, gets to that stage, it is very difficult to stop it.”