If Max Verstappen becomes Formula One world champion, which he might just succeed in doing on Sunday, he would reign as a king without airs and graces.
That much was clear as he entered the sweltering paddock by the Red Sea on Friday.
Whereas his only rival for the crown, Mercedes’ Lewis Hamilton constantly plays a game of cat and mouse with the photographers, trying to outwit them by taking a side entrance here and a detour there, before parading his latest outlandish outfit, Verstappen walks in as if he were about to start up his runabout in the garage of a suburban semi.
Just his physio Brad Scanes is alongside him. Both carry rucksacks. There is no entourage. No security detail. He flashes an acknowledgement to the odd person he knows who catches his eye as he moves in a purposeful manner to the Red Bull motorhome.
Max Verstappen can win his first world championship this weekend at the Jeddah Grand Prix
The Red Bull star leads by eight points and can cement victory if results go his way on Sunday
The heady facts that confront the Dutchman this weekend do not appear to weigh him down.
He leads Hamilton, the seven-time world champion and most decorated racer in history, by eight points with only this inaugural Saudi Arabian Grand Prix and the Abu Dhabi finale next week remaining.
If Verstappen should score 18 points or more than Hamilton in Sunday's race on this terrifyingly fast 3.8-mile course he will become, aged 24, the new champion.
But this narrow Jeddah Corniche Circuit, built with incredible alacrity in eight months and still receiving its final touches as practice ended here on Friday night, is meant to favour Mercedes.
Its long straights and flying corners suggest as much, as did practice on Friday with Hamilton fastest in both sessions. Verstappen was second and fourth best.
The circuit comes with a safety warning contained in its close-in walls. It is Monza in Monaco’s clothes.
Now, Verstappen is the last man to be scared. But in this interview with Sportsmail — sitting alongside his team principal Christian Horner — the championship leader admits: ‘It’s quite a dangerous track. There are so many blind corners so if someone is slow around one you wouldn’t know it until you got there.
‘I expect a bit of trouble. There could be some big shunts.
‘I wonder who signs off these kinds of tracks. I mean, great idea. I guess they have $90million reasons why.’ He is alluding to the fee paid to Formula One for the race’s place on the calendar.
A few hours after he uttered his prophecy of mayhem, Charles Leclerc lost control of his Ferrari, at Turn 22, to bring the day’s running to a premature end. The driver was fine; his car was a mess.
Yet Verstappen does not carry himself like a man within touching distance of greatness
The Dutchman says he is not in Formula One to be famous and lives and breathes racing
I remind Verstappen that a maiden championship victory would place him in a fresh limelight, grant a new status, intensify global fame. Not to mention that it would send his countrymen, especially his huge travelling orange army of vocal supporters, into raptures. Indeed, he is already so feted in Amsterdam that he can’t go out to buy a sandwich.
Verstappen, who lives quietly in Monaco, enjoying time with friends and his girlfriend Kelly Piquet, daughter of triple champion Nelson, says: ‘I am not in Formula One to be famous. I wish I could be anonymous. I wish I could run outside with my pants down.’
‘Not in Saudi Arabia, you can’t,’ Horner chips in.
Verstappen adds: ‘I don’t think of Formula One as a big game or something to make your life glamorous.’
He is a jeans, T-shirt and trainers man. So addressing Hamilton’s fashion-conscious wardrobe, he adds: ‘Everybody has their own style. I am not busy with that kind of thing. For example, I forgot my socks when I came here, so I had to get
