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MIka Hakkinen has admitted he was wrong about his judgement of Max Verstappen.
The two-time world champion branded the Dutch driver as 'too young' when he made the move to Formula One after just one year of car racing.
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Since then, Verstappen has moved to Red Bull and has already become a race winner, leading Hakkinen to change his stance on the teenager.
"I was really happy I was wrong," said Hakkinen. "It has strengthened my understanding that young girls and young boys they are much more ready in this world. You have to let them speak, you have to listen what they have to say."
"Max, obviously, it’s great what he has been doing and when I was a young kid – 16, 17 – when [I was] go-karting, it was amazing," he added. "It was incredibly competitive: the materials, discipline, physical efforts – what I needed to perform was at a very high level."
"Time has changed. Young people, more and more they are going in higher sport categories, including business, including everything," he said.
"And people are developing much faster by time, simply because of the tools that are available today for them to study and understand what is happening in this world."
"You can go for it and study as much as you want on the internet if you find the right information. So the life is much more in the fast lane these days. That explains why these young drivers are entering in such high positions."
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