The Athletic

The Race is on, and Max Vastappan already has one hand on a second consecutive world championship

with an 80-point lead over Charles Leclerc.

So are we now in the Vestappan era and what more can we expect from a driver

who has already racked up 28 F1 victories? I'm Ed Straw, and joining us to answer those questions

and many more are Scott Mitchell and special guest Eric Van Haren. Well, let's start by welcoming

Eric Van Haren to the podcast for the first time. Eric is Formula One correspondent

for Dutch newspaper DeLegraff. It is therefore across all things Max Verstappen. I'm hoping,

Eric, that you can not only correct my terrible Dutch pronunciation, but also act as a bit

of a balance to the terrible British bias we're constantly being accused of when it comes

to Vastappan.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, the pronunciation was not too bad, I have to say. I heard it worse,

especially in the Formula One Paddock, so it's okay. I was hoping that Ed's first question would be, what does the Telegraph translate to in English? Yeah. We can just about guess that one,

but yeah, for those who don't know,

a major newspaper, the Telegraph, that's about the limit of my insight on the Dutch media industry.

But Scott Mitchell, you've already heard from. But I've got to ask, Scott, how's the August

break treating you? Yeah, very relaxing. Not really much going on. It's been quite serene

since we left the Hungara Ring paddock, so can't complain. It's been nice and quiet, apart from, you know, the absolute maelstrom that is the driver market, but it's always a bit fun when that goes off, so I can't really complain. Exactly. Well, there's always some time for a little bit of a break, even in amongst that with a mandatory shutdown. But let's get on with talking about Max Verstappen and Eric. We do have some listeners in the Netherlands, but most listening to this will be limited to seeing the Orange Army out in force at races in terms of judging how big a phenomenon Vastappan is there. So just how big a star is Vastappan in the Netherlands?

Well, it's not the first time I got that question,

but I'm still surprised a little bit.

I'm following Formula One since 2017 or something.

And the Orange Army we see,

...