The youngest Formula 1 world champion Max Verstappen has been an eye-catching and exceptionally fast driver since his F1 debut in 2015 at the age of just 17.
His young age means he was one of the first Formula 1 drivers to make meaningful use of simulation racing games to improve his skills during his ascent into Formula 1.
In addition, Verstappen is still an active simracer in Team Redline and has a lot of experience in racing at large eSports events as well as many successes that come with it.
“It just keeps me ready,” said Verstappen in an interview for sponsor CarNext about his sim exploits after he won the title.
“Because then I also spend a lot of time with the setup. I don’t drive a Formula 1 car in the simulator, but it’s like GT cars. So it is also a different driving technique.
“These sim drivers are so fast.
“It’s very interesting to see them drive because they have no real experience with a car.
“But somehow it should be like that when you look at how they brake, how they accelerate. So it is very interesting for me to compare myself with them, because of course they are fast on the Sim, of course I am fast in real life.
“And that’s another motivation because I’m confident that if I jump in a real car I will be quick.
“But in the simulator these guys are the benchmark and I have to push the limits.
“That’s why I like to test myself and improve myself so that I can learn from them too. So in my free time I still try to improve myself, which also helps me in real life. “
In addition to his many victories in Formula 1 and now a world championship, just in the last three years Verstappen – who admits that “even on the F1 weekends, when I jump out of my car, I would be on Discord,” he checks on his Redline Team an – mates on setups and ideas – has compiled a list of sim racing awards that is enviable for many professional esports riders.
At the iRacing Bathurst 12 Hour 2019, Verstappen was part of a GT3 team with four drivers, which also included Lando Norris and the Dutch professional racing driver Nicky Catsburg.
The team didn’t make it to the finish, but the notable thing is that Verstappen had by far the lowest iRating, a measure of a driver’s success in iRacing, and he was the only driver on his team to hold a Class C license. By comparison, his three teammates all had Class A licenses, and both Norris and Atze Kerkhof had an iRating of over 6000 – compared to Verstappen’s 1508.
Fast forward to this year’s iRacing Petit Le Mans run in October and until then, Verstappen’s iRating was 8754, which was higher than many other Team Redline drivers who were also participating.
This is an easy way to quantify Verstappen’s rising successes in esports over the past three years, but it should also be remembered that what matters is what he’s accomplished at iRacing.
Verstappen was also one of the stars of the very first The Race All-Star Esports Battle run on rFactor 2. He took pole position and won his group race with opponents such as Juan Pablo Montoya, Colton Herta and Antonio Felix da Costa.
This win took the Red Bull driver to the finals, where he competed against a number of top-class eSports drivers and other real racing drivers.
He was the fastest real world driver in qualifying as he started the race from ninth place, but got caught up in the chaos at Turn 1, which dropped him to 22nd. From there he climbed back to 11th place, which on average corresponds to almost one overtaking maneuver per lap.
The only real drivers who crossed the finish line ahead of him were Herta in tenth and Felix Rosenqvist in seventh, although none of these drivers had to fight their way forward like Verstappen.
On numerous occasions, the 2021 F1 champion was the class of the field when competing against other real drivers in sim racing events.
In Team Redline’s Real Racers Never Quit over six lap championship run on iRacing, Verstappen was crowned champion after winning half the races.
In context, Kelvin van der Linde finished second in the points classification and Norris finished third after several podiums but never a race win. The two F1 drivers came together in the second race at Spa in the battle for the lead and happened to hand over the victory to van der Linde.
It seems like the tables have turned 
@ Max33Verstappen @LandoNorris pic.twitter.com/tqVa9nwgjw
– Team Redline (@TeamRedlineSim) March 23, 2020
Even when Verstappen took part in the second round of the Supercars All Stars Eseries as a wildcard participant, he was right at the front of the field despite the race against professional, real Supercars drivers.
Of the four races the Dutchman took part in, two at Silverstone and two in Barcelona, he finished second in three races. The exception was the reverse grid race, where he had to start from 25th and made up seven positions in nine laps of Silverstone.
It’s also worth noting that Verstappen wasn’t alone on the grid when it came to proven talent at iRacing. This series also included the three-time Supercars champion and enthusiastic simracer Scott McLaughlin as well as the Supercars champion from 2016 and his team redline driver Shane van Gisbergen.
The fact that Verstappen was instantly similar to them, despite driving a category of car he is far less familiar with, speaks to how talented the F1 star is as a sim racer.
He may be quick and adaptable when it comes to sim racing, but Verstappen wasn’t always lucky.
After a dominant performance in the first race of the VCO ProSIM Series with a pole position and a race win at the side of Simracer Maximilian Benecke, the two started strong in Verstappen’s only further appearance in the series with second place in Spa.
However, a netcode issue while racing alongside Nicolas Varrone in the battle for first place resulted in Verstappen’s F3 car being sent into the barrier, prompting him to withdraw from the event.
Oddly enough, Verstappen also suffered technical problems in two consecutive 24 Hours of Le Mans on rFactor 2.
He was the fastest qualifier for the 2019 event, beating Aleksi Uusi-Jaakkola in Team Redline’s sister car. However, no car had a chance of winning, as the race was abandoned with the red flag due to technical problems and canceled after 12 hours.
The following year, Verstappen was far from the only high-profile real-world driver to compete in the 2020 Le Mans Virtual 24 Hours before real motorsport had fully returned.
Even in a field of other past and current F1 drivers including Fernando Alonso, Pierre Gasly and Jenson Button among many others, Verstappen and the rest of the Redline team battled for overall victory as they qualified fifth and occasionally led the race.
But after nine hours in the race, with Verstappen at the wheel and in first place, he was stopped by the Williams Esports car that would eventually win. That’s because the Team Redline car broke down and was placed right in front of the Williams Esports car, forcing an accident.
That caused considerable damage to the Redline LMP-Auto team when, later in the lap at the Porsche corners, Verstappen turned into the guardrail and then had to crawl back into the pits. The team carried on, but the four drivers, including Norris, finished 25th overall, 17 laps behind the winners.
Not every iRacing special event has gone down Verstappen’s path, including the iRacing Petit Le Mans, as his teammate Diogo Pinto had a hardware failure that forced the two to step down when they took the lead.
But since the beginning of 2019 he has four wins in iRacing Special Event victories, including two this year. The two most recent victories were well deserved and even if you ignore the rest of the team and only look at Verstappen’s personal performance, he was the class of the field in both races.
He qualified for the team at the Bathurst 12 Hours and took pole position 0.449 seconds ahead of Williams Esports’ runner-up Lasse Bak.
The one-lap pace resulted in a strong race pace with one of the fastest average lap times of any driver in the race. After 12 hours, he and his teammate, former Ferrari F1 Esports driver Enzo Bonito, won and were one lap ahead of the runner-up.
Two months later, Verstappen followed with victory in the iRacing Nürburgring 24-hour race and shared a car with Benecke and Chris Lulham.
Of the 174 laps that his team completed, Verstappen drove away 56. It is noteworthy that, apart from Sven Haase, who only completed four laps before his team left, Verstappen had the fastest personal average lap time of all.
It’s worth noting that iRacing’s special events are some of the most prestigious in the game and therefore attract the best of players. In a field made up of the most prestigious iRacing drivers, Verstappen beat everyone at the average racing pace over the course of the 24 hours!
In contrast, Verstappen had some black spots during his sim racing days. In the second lap of the first rFactor 2 GT Pro Series, he was anything but flawless, which resulted in two penalties in both races.
Perhaps the most egregious encounter he has ever had was the sequel to Team Redline’s Real Racers Never Quit Championship, which was a historic theme and featured a field of 79 Lotus F1 cars.
Verstappen took first place in the second race at Silverstone, just ahead of his real racing driver Dani Juncadella. The two touched when Verstappen forced Juncadella onto the grass and then spun himself after hitting Juncadella’s right front tire. In short, you could call it Verstappen trying too aggressively to defend his position.
Those few occasions aside, Verstappen has no doubt proven that he is a truly exceptional sim racer, given his raw speed and the ability to reproduce it lap after lap on a variety of different tracks and in a variety of different cars. He estimates that he invests “40-50 hours” of preparation time for every esports event he runs.
“I want to win whatever I do,” added Verstappen.
“I want to go out there and not look like an idiot.
“So when I’m in the simulator, I’m also in full swing.”
The newest F1 world champion isn’t just good at sim racing by the standards of a real driver – he’s one of the most talented and successful sim racers in the world.
