Former Red Bull driver David Coulthard has ranked his three best Red Bull drivers of all-time – surprisingly all three have “Max” as their first name.
Taking over the former Stewart and Jaguar team, Red Bull Racing officially entered Formula 1 for the 2005 championship with Coulthard completing the full season while Christian Klien and Tonio Luizzi shared the second Red Bull F1 car.
Red Bull’s top three? ‘That has to be Max, Max and Max’
Coulthard continued with the team for a further three seasons before announcing he was retiring from F1 but would remain a Red Bull ambassador, with his seat going to Sebastian Vettel in 2009.
The German became Red Bull’s first of two World Champions in 2010 when he beat Ferrari’s Fernando Alonso to the title in a Hail-Mary pass at the season-ending Abu Dhabi GP.
But while Vettel went on to win four Drivers’ Championship titles with Red Bull, a run from 2010 to 2013, it is today’s World Champion Max Verstappen who the Scot believes is the ‘best’ of Red Bull’s World Champions.
He explained to the Dutch edition of Motorsport.com: “That has to be Max, Max and Max.
“You can’t take anything away from Seb’s four World titles, but if you look at his career as a whole, Seb was no longer as impressive at the end as when he won his World titles.
“Look at Michael Schumacher at Mercedes, he was also no longer as impressive in that period as he was in his Ferrari time.
“It shows that everyone has their own time, but I think it is obvious to put Max first.
As for who takes second place, Vettel is “second with his four World titles” while behind him comes Mark Webber ahead of Daniel Ricciardo.
Pressed as to why Webber beats Ricciardo given neither won a title for Red Bull, Coulthard explained: “As for P3, I would say Mark Webber ahead of Daniel Ricciardo, because he was a more ‘manly man’ and Daniel a bit more of a ‘boy man’, so to speak.
“The latter is partly due to the fact that Webber did not let anyone walk all over him and, among other things, bit back with ‘not bad for a number 2 driver’.
“Moreover, Oscar Piastri’s current manager had to compete with the then-World Champion for years, while Ricciardo preferred a lucrative departure to Renault to fighting with a Verstappen on the rise.”
In fact such are the Scot’s feelings about loyalties, DC acknowledged, “these guys have all come through the team and celebrated successes. Seb signed with Ferrari with love by using a clause in his contract, when he was still under contract.
“So none of these F1 drivers are loyal. It’s the nature of the beast that selfishness goes hand in hand with being a sportsman.”
