Verstappen’s “incredible” F3 drive which told Tost he was a future Schumacher · RaceFans

It’s 10 years since Max Verstappen’s sole year of competition in junior single-seaters which promoted his swift elevation to Formula 1 and motorsport superstardom.

He has now won three world championships, all with Red Bull, who beat the likes of Mercedes to get his name on a contract. Famously, they brought him into F1 at just 17 years old, prompting the FIA to introduce an age limit soon afterwards to prevent anyone as young as him competing in the top flight again.

But Red Bull’s management had become convinced Verstappen was a star of the future. Franz Tost, then in charge of their junior F1 team Toro Rosso (later AlphaTauri, now operating as ‘RB’), recently identified the race which marked Verstappen out as a potential superstar of the future – a performance which he though stood comparison with the most successful F1 driver at that time, Michael Schumacher.

It came at the Norisring midway through the FIA Formula 3 European championship. Verstappen bypassed several lower categories and made F3 his first major single seater championship, and despite his inexperience collected enough points over the opening 12 rounds to lie fifth in the championships.

But there was clear potential for him to do better. He had only scored in five of those races, and already taken his first win, at the Hockenheimring. In the fifth of the season’s triple-header rounds at Spa-Francorchamps Verstappen hit his stride, becoming the first driver that year to sweep all three races.

The next round took place at a circuit utterly different to the long, sweeping Belgian circuit. The Norisring is a compact street course measuring just 2.3 kilometres. Though it officially has eight corners, realistically only four present a challenge to the driver, even in wet conditions, which made Verstappen’s performance all the more impressive.

Victory in the weekend’s opening race lifted Verstappen to second in the standings. The ultra-consistent Esteban Ocon lay 106 points ahead, having taken five wins and nine further podium finishes up to that point, but with 425 points available Verstappen could still entertain thoughts of mounting a challenge for the title.

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He placed his Van Amersfoort-run car on pole position, pipping Ocon by less than a tenth of a second. As the race began on a damp track Verstappen held his lead while Tom Blomqvist demoted Ocon to third.