THE MAKING OF A CHAMPION
September 2013. Pembrey. The Welsh rain is not letting up as a Belgo-Dutch kid, just short of his 16th birthday, prepares to go out for his first-ever run in a racing car. Apart from his nervous dad, the only spectators are the soggy sheep in the nearby fields. Is it worth risking it?
“He didn’t want to let him out, but I said, ‘Just go out and drive’,” relates Tony Shaw, who along with wife Sarah Shaw ran the ‘Manor’ half of the Manor MP Motorsport Formula Renault 2.0 team with which karting superstar Max Verstappen was about to get his first taste of a single-seater. ‘He’ was Dutch racing legend Jos Verstappen, who since his own retirement from the cockpit had devoted his life to preparing his son for what he was convinced would be Formula 1 superstardom.
It was 12 years since Shaw, then working as an engineer for the previous incarnation of Manor (run by future F1 team boss John Booth), had been on hand for the first test in a car – also a Renault 2.0 – of a karting sensation by the name of Lewis Hamilton.
“There aren’t many top-line karters like them who you get to see first time in a car,” continues Shaw. “Lewis ran at Mallory Park – he was pretty attacking I have to say, and shunted it! But he took to it easily and Max did as
