‘He needs to be careful’ - Rosberg’s warning to Verstappen

Verstappen’s win at the Belgian Grand Prix was his eighth consecutive victory and 10th in 12 races this season as the Dutchman opened up a 125-point championship lead over Red Bull teammate Sergio Perez heading into the summer break. 

Amid Verstappen’s seemingly unstoppable charge to a third successive world title, 2016 world champion Rosberg thinks there is only one thing he needs to be “careful of”. 

“It’s more a general thing that he needs to be careful that he doesn’t get complacent,” Rosberg recently told the Sky Sports F1 Podcast.

"He's in such an incredible flow where no one can touch him, and that's usually when there's a risk of getting complacent and you lose a bit of motivation, so he just needs to be a bit careful of that.

"But I don't see that happening because the state of mind that he has is phenomenal and he's so focused and so in the zone all the time.

"It's like art, it's amazing.”

Rosberg, who pipped Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton to the 2016 title before retiring from the sport days later, reckons Verstappen should already be considered as one of the all-time F1 greats. 

“Verstappen is driving in such a legendary way,” he added. 

“I mean, he is driving like one of the best five or six of all time, in line with a [Ayrton] Senna, [Michael] Schumacher, [Lewis] Hamilton and [Juan Manuel] Fangio, and then you start to struggle [to think of more names] already."