Max Verstappen had little time to think during the first laps of the “Max vs 100” challenge, held on Wednesday (16) in Silverstone. Starting from 101st position, the four-time F1 world champion had to react quickly to the chaos on the track before beginning to move up through the pack. In the end, it took him only 35 minutes to overtake the 100 opponents and win the Red Bull event.
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The start was especially complicated. At Turn 1, the 100 karts came together and Verstappen ended up going into the runoff area to avoid the turmoil. After that, he began gaining positions gradually, until he reached the last three drivers, including Dutch F1 journalist Jacky Martens and Louis Osler, a member of his team at Red Bull.
Even with some contact throughout the race, Verstappen managed to pass the opponents without getting involved in a more serious incident. For him, besides his own quick reaction, the behavior of the other drivers helped a lot.
“You just act on instinct based on what happens, right?” Verstappen explained. “When the lights go out, you just see where the spaces are, and then you also have to trust some people around you not to do anything crazy, and honestly, they didn’t.”
“They were very excited among themselves, but actually they were pretty nice to me, not hitting me or anything like that. But you act very quickly when you see everything unfolding in front of you. The first half [of the race] is pure chaos, so you just want to survive, and after that, you start hunting them down. So it’s pretty cool when you have to do the laps alone and catch them one by one.”
Verstappen also revealed that his prediction for the first lap ended up being well below what actually happened. Before the race, the driver had said it would be bold to think about 40 overtakes right away. Later, he was informed that the number had reached 61.
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“At one point, I said before the race: ‘let’s be bold and say I would overtake 40 people on Lap 1,’ and then they told me it was 61, I think. So it was a good effort, and I just had to stay out of trouble. Some people got very excited and there was some blocking on the track, but I managed to avoid it.”
The victory, despite the challenge of starting last, was already considered possible by Verstappen even before the start. The driver explained that he had as reference the times recorded in the preparation laps and the qualifying times of the other participants.
“Well, I knew my lap times when I did the preparation laps, and I knew the qualifying lap times of the others, so I knew the victory was possible,” he said.
The main point of attention was the first two laps. If he could get through the initial traffic without losing much time or getting involved in confusion, Verstappen would be able to put his pace into practice. And that’s exactly what happened.
“But it depended a lot on my first two laps, and they were better than expected, which helped a lot.”
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