Not sure if serious? Like him or loathe him I think general consensus is that he's a top tier driver. Sure cracks show under pressure from time to time but the same can be said for any of the greats. I personally believe he'd have reached a slightly more well rounded driver by now at a different team but that's beside the point.
Yep, I'm absolutely being serious. Max is most definitely not one of the greats and has only reached such a high level of results due to car dominance plus being teamed with second rate drivers (Second rate being a relative term, of course - Checko is clearly one of the greatest drivers on the planet, holding a seat in a F1 team, etc, but in this rarified environment, Checko is several levels of talent lower than Hamilton and Alonso.) I felt the exact same with Vettel - only achieved so much due to car dominance and consistent dirty tricks versus relatively equal team mates.
Max is a dirty racer. Fact. His dirty, aggressive and badly judged antics is the prime reason for his success in close racing. He has held a deliberate mindset, from his early career, that you gain dominance by culturing a reputation of being willing to crash rather than yield. He would rather crash than yield and to hell with the consequences - and carrying this mindset knowing that he will maintain that style to the very end - such that other drivers always drive tentatively around him. The only driver to have understood this in the past has been Hamilton, who still takes the fight to him (when able) but to use wisdom and car control to avoid Max's deliberate attempts to crash (Brazil, for instance, where Hamilton knew what Max might do and defended accordingly by avoiding contact but also not yielding himself...)
I believe that Lando is now beginning to understand how to tackle Max, too. Not to yield, but also to defend against the deliberate crash attempts at the same time.
There is a specific reason why Max's antics have been solely responsible for several rule changes within the sport. He is a danger and liability, not just to other drivers but also to himself. He is categorically not all that he is cracked up to be as a top-top tier driver. He has great car control, for sure, but he also carries that *contact, crash and smash* mindset that has carried him forwards more than his driving skill alone.