Every paddock has the same conversation about every prodigy. The kid is too fast, so the engine must be illegal, the chassis must be tweaked, the dad must be doing something nobody else is allowed to do. Pedro de la Rosa has confirmed that Max Verstappen got the full version of that treatment when he was still in karts, and that the man fielding the accusations was, predictably, his father Jos.

De la Rosa, the former McLaren and HRT driver who now works as Aston Martin‘s ambassador and a regular pundit on Spanish F1 coverage, told a story in a recent interview about bumping into Jos Verstappen at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya back when Max was tearing through European karting.

De la Rosa reflected on how he raved about the young Dutchman as a driver in karting. Jos, in classic Jos fashion, brushed it off with something close to “he’s still got plenty to learn.”

“One day, I ran into Jos Verstappen at the Catalunya circuit and I said to him: ‘Hey Jos’—his son was spectacular, one of the best karting drivers in history,” he said in Spanish (translated with AI). “And I told him: ‘Hey, I’ve heard your son is a phenomenon in karting, right?’

“And he says to me: ‘Well, he still has a lot to learn, we’ll see Pedro, you know how this sport works.’ And I thought: ‘What a cold father, right?!’ And really, well, the proof is in the pudding.”

The Cheating Accusations That Followed Verstappen Through Karting

The more interesting bit is what de la Rosa heard from everyone who wasn’t Jos. There were conversations saying that Jos was building Max’s engines himself and that whatever was bolted to the back of that kart wasn’t a normal motor. This, of course, wasn’t true.

“The people around would also say: ‘Yeah, yeah, but his father prepares the kart engine, be careful, these guys don’t have a normal engine.’ They would hint that he was cheating.

“And then he wins everything, he’s a world-class talent, and that’s when you say to those people: ‘Are they cheating in Formula 1 too?'”

This isn’t a new accusation in karting circles, and de la Rosa isn’t the first person to mention it. Max himself has talked openly over the years about Jos preparing his equipment and pushing him brutally hard, including the now-famous story of being left at a Italian gas station after a bad race.

Verstappen went on to win in Formula 3, win in Toro Rosso, win on debut for Red Bull at Barcelona in 2016, and then win four consecutive World Championships from 2021 to 2024.

The kart parents who talked about Jos’s engines were doing what kart parents do – making themselves feel better about their own children losing. De la Rosa just had the patience to wait two decades for the receipts.