After three F1 Drivers’ titles and 37 victories in the last 47 races held – precisely in Imola, two years ago, a phase of Red Bull dominance began which continues to this day and which has few precedents in the history of the GP circus – Verstappen should not no longer need introductions. In reality, the Dutch champion always manages to push the bar even further: workaholic, hungry for victories and challenges, raised on bread and motors since childhood to the point of developing a sort of addiction to competitions, Super Max announced during a live Twitch broadcast his intention to participate in the next virtual 24 Hours of the Nurburgring. All normal, if only it weren’t for one small but not negligible detail: organized on the iRacing simulator, the online race is scheduled for this weekend and is therefore concurrent with the Emilia Romagna GP weekend in Imola.
MAX PASSION SIM
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It is no mystery that Verstappen is a great fan of racing, including virtual ones, and that he spends much of his free time on his home simulator. Just as it is no mystery that, especially when the European GP season begins, the Dutchman travels with a workstation and a PC in tow gaming perfectly updated to play online races and keep in training. It is thanks to this equipment that Max could therefore participate in the 24 Hours of Nurburgring, sharing the driving with his teammates from the Redline team, one of the most successful teams in the eSport world to which the home champion Red Bull also relies for the management of his Verstappen.com Racing virtual team.
VERSTAPPEN SPEAKS
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However, it is decidedly less frequent that a protagonist of this caliber in the Formula 1 World Championship decides to take part in a challenging online race – the layout involves passage on the legendary Nordschleife, the over 20 km ring that F1 abandoned after the serious Niki Lauda’s accident in 1976, but which today is widely used in endurance racing (even real, as well as virtual) – on the weekend of a GP. A choice that Verstappen explained in the press conference, recalling that he also competed online during the weekend of the night GP in Jeddah: “It’s something I do often. In Saudi Arabia, for example, I tried to stay on the European time zone by going to bed at four in the morning and getting up a little later.”
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THE IMOLA WEEKEND
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However, a situation that is unlikely to be repeated in Imola, given that the weekend times are already traditional European ones. “It will depend on how things go – added Max – because on Saturday evening I won’t have much time and obviously during the day it will be complicated (competing online, ed.). In any case, I’ll go to sleep at the right time because then I’ll have to race Sunday’s GP quite rested. However, I believe I am professional enough to understand what can and cannot be done. Nobody gets to decide what a driver should do on a Saturday night, right? Other colleagues maybe go out to dinner or something, it’s my free time. The criticisms? They don’t interest me, I have many years of experience now and I know what I’m doing.”
