Max Verstappen faced a challenge quite different from what he is used to in Formula 1: in Silverstone, he faced 100 amateur karters and achieved victory with an impressive performance. Now, the competitor wants to repeat the dose – but with an extra dose of emotion.
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This week, Red Bull put the four-time world champion to challenge 100 opponents on the track. Over 30 laps, or 75 minutes, he would have to start from the back of the grid and try to reach first place. It so happens that the competitor achieved the feat in just 35 minutes, or 14 laps.
“When I was walking to the grid and saw where I would have to start, I thought: ‘wow, that’s really far back’. But after my first lap, I thought: ‘Ah, I think we’re good, I think it’s going to work out’. It mainly depended on the first two laps. If I did well in the first two, then yes, what would it be, 15 or 20 laps? But the first lap went a little better than expected, so that helps a lot,” he said.
As soon as the lights went out, the driver made a leap in the pack and managed to leave 64 competitors behind still on the first lap. Then, a yellow flag was raised for two laps, but it was already clear that the task would not be very complicated for Max. “You just act on instinct, whatever happens. When the lights go out, you kind of see where the spaces are and then you also have to trust that the people around you won’t do anything crazy,” he said.
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“To be honest, they didn’t do any of that. They were very excited with each other, but actually, they were pretty nice to me. So, they didn’t need to hit me or anything like that. But you just act very quickly when you see everything unfolding in front of you.”
Now, Verstappen has already asked for the next challenge against karters. “I said before, like, ‘maybe 200’ amateurs to compete against. Red Bull always comes up with crazy and fun things, that suits me. I can really be myself. The way it was organized today, I know it takes a lot of work to do something like this and invite so many people, but it’s a lot of fun to be part of it.”
“Sometimes I remember what I really did in the past and think: ‘My God, did I really do that?’. It’s fun and it’s definitely one of the best experiences there is. How many times do you have the opportunity to create something like this? Racing against a hundred other people. I think that’s really cool, only Red Bull can do something like this,” he concluded.
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