At 17, Littler became the youngest-ever champion in the history of the PDC World Darts Championship on Friday when he saw off Michael van Gerwen in the showpiece final at Alexandra Palace, London.
It comes just a year after Warrington-born Littler burst onto the scene at the same tournament, eventually losing the final on that occasion to fellow Brit Luke Humphries.
Littler’s rise has attracted comparisons to the emergence of Red Bull driver Verstappen, who has established himself as one of the greatest drivers in F1 history since arriving on the grid a decade ago.
Verstappen made his debut with the Toro Rosso (now Racing Bulls) junior outfit aged 17 in 2015, before being promoted to the Red Bull senior team after just four races of his second full season.
After winning on debut for Red Bull at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix, Verstappen sealed his first World Championship in 2021 following a titanic battle with Lewis Hamilton.
Verstappen, now 27, wrapped up his four consecutive World Championship in F1 2024, becoming only the second driver in the sport’s history after Red Bull icon Sebastian Vettel to win his first four titles in successive years.
Despite winning 53 of the last 90 races since the start of 2021 in an unprecedented spell of dominance, Verstappen has frequently threatened to retire early having grown frustrated with aspects of modern F1.
And Littler, who met Verstappen during a visit to the 2024 British Grand Prix at Silverstone, has become the latest young sporting superstar to declare a willingness to end his career prematurely, claiming that he could stop at the age of 27 after a decade at the top.
He told the Times: “I’ve been playing a long time in the juniors, in the old British Darts Federation.
“I might just do ten or fifteen years and retire if I’ve had enough.”
Verstappen has regularly cited F1’s expanding calendar as a factor behind his temptation to retire young, with the F1 2024 season the longest in history at 24 races.
Speaking to Italy’s La Gazzetta dello Sport in November, Verstappen’s father Jos insisted that his son will see out the entirety of his current Red Bull contract, which is due to expire at the end of the F1 2028 season.
And despite rumours of a potential future move to Mercedes throughout last year, Mr Verstappen claimed that his son could even take a sabbatical from F1 at that point to regain his motivation.
He said: “We have a contract with Red Bull until 2028 and we’ll get there, then we’ll see.
“We’ll have to see if Max will still be interested in F1.
“All his life he’s been told what he has to do, including by me, and now it’s happening with the team. There will come a time when he wants to decide.
“There is certainly more to his life than F1 and Max is aware of that. He listens a lot to his feelings, he knows what he wants, but it’s difficult to say what will happen.
“Maybe he will stop for a year in the future and then he will feel like coming back.
“Certainly, it’s not the records that motivate him. He doesn’t need to win seven or eight world championships, he is already happy with what he has achieved.”
