Adrian Newey feels that Max Verstappen is good at giving succinct feedback on the car, with the Red Bull chief technical officer joking that drivers who talk a lot cause him to fall asleep. After working with many different F1 drivers over the years, Newey has experienced plenty of variations in how they explain their thoughts about the car. Fortunately he is impressed by Verstappen's method, which he thinks strikes an effective balance of going into detail without making it unnecessarily long. "His [Verstappen's] feedback is very good," Newey told the Talking Bull podcast. "I've seen it all in terms of driver feedback, which is a huge variable. You get some drivers who kind of talk endlessly and start with the first stage of entry into Turn 1, finishing at the last stage of exit of Turn 20. "Certainly, in my case, I've fallen asleep by then and I've lost concentration! Whereas Max has got a very good balance of concentrating on the key parts that he needs to make the car go faster." Newey is similarly full of praise for Verstappen's driving ability, and also feels that the Dutchman has shown increasing maturity in recent times. "He has that steely grit that any world champion needs, to dig in and keep going in the face of adversity," Newey said. "If things go wrong on a particular weekend, then put that behind you and look forward to the next one. "I think his driving ability is obviously superb, his ability to live with what we call a neutral car - in other words a car where the rear end moves around a little bit - is exceptional. "He's matured into a great racer. He's really not made any mistakes this year. If you include Hungary - because it's kind of semi-effectively a DNF - then he's had three DNFs through no fault of his own. "But he's kept his head and he's bounced back from all of those. His natural speed is very clear." Newey also believes that the fact that Verstappen has interests outside of F1 is a positive thing. "He's very easy to chat to. He's got a range of interests, which I think is very important for a Formula 1 driver. If your only interest is Formula 1, then that can almost make it too important to you and the pressure comes on, so I think Max has got a very good balance in that sense."
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