Three-time British Formula 1 world champion Sir Jackie Stewart says the 2016 season was "not very interesting" bar Max Verstappen's accomplishments.
Stewart claims the sport has very few personalities and therefore Verstappen's success is a welcome surprise.
"Lewis Hamilton is a kind of modern hero, [Sebastian] Vettel is a quiet hero," he told Swiss newspaper Blick. "And [Kimi] Raikkonen is perhaps even more popular than those two, although he barely says anything or perhaps he's popular precisely because of it!
"Verstappen reminds me of the first races of Mario Andretti, Jochen Rindt and Francois Cevert. They all managed to shake things up.
"Other than Verstappen's breakthrough, it was not a very interesting season," he claimed.
Stewart says F1 is missing key ingredients which are needed to keep fans interested.
"It's missing excitement, incidents, failures and accidents," he said.
"Don't get me wrong, nobody wants to see a driver crash but you want some excitement. In my day that was the case, but unfortunately many of my rivals paid the ultimate price for that."
