Book Review: Max Verstappen Born to Race by James Gray

After chalking up another victory in Barcelona and hot favourite to win this weekend’s Canadian GP, Max Verstappen’s current form has the look and feel of past great multiple world champion F1 drivers – Vettel, Hamilton, Senna, Schumacher. It’s amazing that he is already a double world champion at only 25 years of age. Curiously like Sebastian Vettel, there’s been relatively few English books written on this Dutch-Belgian champion. One book though is James Gray’s “Max Verstappen“. In 2021, the sport’s journalist released “Max Verstappen – The Inside Track on a Formula One Star” and following Max’s 2021 world title success, James Gray released an updated edition which covered the 2021 season.  I’m going to review this 2022 edition but keep in mind, there’s now a newer edition released which includes Max’s 2nd world title .

As a F1 fan, I knew Max was 90’s Dutch F1 driver Jos Verstappen’s son and a talented child prodigy with such a junior reputation good enough to be subject of an earnest bidding war between Red Bull (Helmut Marko), Ferrari and Mercedes (Toto Wolff). Prior to reading James Gray’s book, I didn’t know much of Max’s background other than he was super fast karter that had regular clashes on track with a young Charles Leclerc.

James Gray’s book consists of a prologue and 14 chapters (the prologue and chapters 13 & 14 is the updated content from the 1st edition).

The early chapters deal with Jos Verstappen (warts and all), Max’s Belgium birth but Dutch racing upbringing, his family life and  Jos’ hardcore grooming of Max through the junior Dutch and European karting championships up to F3.

More than half the book (first 8 chapters) cover Max’s pre-F1 junior career which James Gray manages to cover in good detail. His maiden season with Toro Rosso paired with Carlos Sainz Jnr is briefly dealt with in one chapter with focus on Australian, Malaysian, Monaco, Spa and Suzuka. The final few chapters chart his promotion to the main Red Bull team with his famous maiden victory at Barcelona, bromance with Danny Ric, occasional opportunistic wins, 2020 and the epic 2021 battle with Lewis. In between the racing stories, James Gray also rounds out the book by providing some insights into Max’s family, management and personal life developments.

There are a few centre pages with various colour photos including with Jos and Max in his early karting days through to some important Red Bull racing victories (e.g. 2016 Spanish GP, 2019 Austrian GP and 2021 Abu Dhabi). The photo selections aren’t particularly unique and are mostly in-person photos rather than racing action shots.

For Max fans, there’s been few English language biographies published and James Gray’s book although not an official biography, still makes for a good entertaining read, particularly if you’re don’t know much about Max’s upbringing. Being an unofficial biography has also allowed James Gray to give an uncensored portrayal of Max’s dad, Jos. I had no idea of Jos’ history of problem charges against him until reading this book and it definitely gives context to Max’s career cultivation, which is a point James Gray tries to make throughout the book. In a lot of ways, this book is kind of a Jos Verstappen and Verstappen family biography too.

Another biography from Mark Hughes will be released soon to hit the shelves, so we’ll have to see how it stacks up against James Gray’s book.

Wow factor/money shot: Maybe the famous Max and Lewis accident at Monza in 2021 or maybe the shot of  stern Jos and Max before the F3 race at Zandvoort.

Suitable for: Max fans & current era F1 fans