Being a pushy parent is a minefield – but Jos Verstappen has taken it to a new level
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You walk a fine line as the parent of a promising young athlete. How to encourage without being overbearing? How to maintain perspective, so you can notice when your kid needs a break? How best to manage a situation when the bloke in charge of your child’s team is accused of controlling behaviour, cleared of it, then some messages are leaked, the boss denies everything, then tactically deploys a Spice Girl?
It is a minefield, and Jos Verstappen assessed the volatility and chose further explosives. The father of all-conquering Max said “It can’t go on the way it is. It will explode,” to the Mail on Sunday. “He [Horner] is playing the victim, when he is the one causing the problems.”
How much does Max really love energy drinks which taste of medicine? If Christian Horner survives we are about to find out. Jos has already had a terse conversation with Horner (although they handshook and made up later) and there are rumours of flirting with Toto Wolff. “He is not a liar, that is for sure,” Max said about his father ahead of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix, helpfully.
None of this comes from the modern sporting parental playbook, which emphasises constant praise and looking pleased in the grandstand when your boy does some particularly nice overtaking. As the Bahrain Grand Prix was taking place it was Silent Support weekend for youth footballers back here. Parents were invited to offer only applause as support, a logical progression in weaning off violence of referees to just shouting abuse, now from shouting anything at all. Jos would be the bloke chasing assistants into the dressing rooms at Sunday League, or the motorsport equivalent. Squaring up to the VR race stewards on Gran Turismo 7?
The word “fiery” has done some heavy lifting in profiles of Max’s dad this week. This is a man who was given a five-year non-custodial sentence for fracturing someone’s skull in a fight at a go-kart track, was accused of assaulting a 24-year-old girlfriend (which he denied), arrested for attempted murder (a charge he denied and was later withdrawn due to lack of evidence) and violated a restraining order to threaten Max’s mother Sophie Kumpen, for which he was handed a fine and a three-month suspended probationary prison sentence.
Tough love for Max included ignoring him for a week after crashing his kart at the karting World Cup in Italy and telling him repeatedly he would never make the grade.
The uncomfortable truth is many successful sportspeople have parents who, whilst not in Jos’ league, come across as pushy and controlling. Richard Williams, tenacious hype man to Venus and Serena; David Beckham’s Dad Ted, a Manchester United obsessive who encouraged his boy to spend his childhood toiling but never paid him a compliment; and Earl Woods introducing Tiger to golf before the age of two, which, if you have ever tried to get a two year old to do anything which requires coordination, sounds like purgatory. He famously used to swear at infant Tiger as he practised his swing. Not surprised.
Then, after all that practice paid off, Woods snr. said in 1996 “He’s the bridge between the East and the West. I don’t know yet exactly what form this will take. But he is the Chosen One. He’ll have the power to impact nations. Not people. Nations.” Okay Dad, too far in the other direction.
So harshness seems to get results but assuming it is the only way to nurture a gifted child is survivor bias, overlooking multiple failures. There are just as many cautionary tales about broken relationships, ruined dreams and of course many millions of untold stories about parents whose pushiness did not result in an elite sporting career. In those cases what remains is only disappointment and possibly a lifelong inferiority complex.
“Max was my life project, yes,” Jos said to Dutch magazine Formule 1 in 2019, which sounds like a crass way to talk about your child, but also “I found the time with Max much more fun than my own career. I think that when you can achieve something like that with your own child, it is much more intense than when you do it for yourself.” Probably true. But given his son’s utter dominance it may be time to dial it down a touch.
