Max Verstappen has four world titles and no longer needs to prove anything to anyone. Even so, asked whether fear exists in Formula 1, he did not reach for a stock phrase. "You can still die on tarmac today. I have no fear, but I am aware of the risk."

The line comes as an answer to Niki Lauda's famous thought - that a driver who feels no fear is a danger. Verstappen turns the scene towards time: "In the sixties, seventies or eighties, the tracks and everything around them were so dangerous that there was always a chance you would die every time you got in the car." Safety levels today are far higher. But they are not zero. He simply refuses to call that fear - it is awareness of situations that can end badly.

Madrid as "the new Monaco" - and he has never been there

The new street circuit in Madrid is already being marketed as the next Monaco. Verstappen answers that with something you rarely hear from an athlete on a promotional tour: he does not know. "First of all, I have never been to Madrid." Nor has he driven the track on a simulator. "I do not know what to expect; but I suppose that is exactly the exciting part." The corner named La Monumental he will see on arrival.

There is something refreshing about a driver who, asked about expectations, replies that he has none. How often do we hear an athlete arrive somewhere already certain the place is "magical"?

How you train a head that does not crack

The motto of the watch brand he represents is "Do not crack under pressure". Asked how you train that with twenty drivers behind you waiting for a mistake, Verstappen answers in three sentences total: "Do not overcomplicate things. I know who I am and I trust myself." That is it.

He applies the same economy to titles. Is defending a championship a pleasure or a self-imposed tyranny? "It has never mattered to me whether I am the hunter or the hunted, because in the end everything depends on how good your car is." And he adds something champions rarely say out loud - that he is aware he will lose again at some point, and that this is fine.

The body pays in the neck, lower back and shoulders

Drivers have long since stopped being just drivers. Verstappen says the areas where he most needs strength are the neck, the lower back and the shoulders, plus the legs because of braking force. But he refuses to mythologise it: every sport burns its own muscles. "If a footballer sits in a Formula 1 car, he will come out wrecked too."

On diet he is even more open: "I do not live with the extreme rigidity of a cyclist on a diet." He has his free meals, he has them deliberately, and he knows exactly when he can enjoy a good meal and when he has to tighten up again. The only rule he has imposed on himself is that he must not step out of the car feeling his body held him back.

Legacy: a man who stayed himself

Asked what he would like a father to tell his son one day in front of a cabinet of his helmets, the answer is not about trophies. "I would like him to talk about someone who, above all, stayed true to himself." Only after that comes the untameable competitor who never left a gram of performance unused.

And asked what advice he would give the 17-year-old strapping himself into a Toro Rosso for the first time - none. "The real value of life is that you do not know what the future brings." You need to trip, to get it wrong and to go through hard days. A rare sentence in a sport where everyone is selling certainty.