Around Christmas time last year, Luke Small, a 35-year-old from England, sat down at his PC to play iRacing, his favorite sim-racing platform. He was expecting another routine race when an eye-catching username joined his open lobby: “Jos Verstappen.”
Small’s jaw dropped.
“I was just…really excited,” he recalls, chuckling.
Within the iRacing community, that handle is known as one of the accounts (plural) belonging to Max Verstappen. Yes, that Max Verstappen. See, iRacing accounts are connected to credit cards, and there are no handles, only real names. His main account, "Max Verstappen," is reserved for high-level races in order to keep his iRating pristine, while his alternate account is named after his father. There are rumors he has a third handle with his full name, "Max-Emilian Verstappen." (It’s common for pro-level sim racers to have two handles, because iRacing separates ratings for oval tracks and road courses, and some—like Max—will want to protect their strongest track rating.)
“To be fair, [racing against pros] is not uncommon in iRacing,” Small adds. “A lot of professionals use it, and you can end up with them quite regularly, which is very cool.”
But Verstappen is Verstappen. The three-time Formula 1 champion seemingly spends more time on the sim for Red Bull than any of his peers—so much so, that he’s got a side-hustle as one of the best sim racers in the world.
He's been a part of sim-racing organization Team Redline since 2015, competing with the group in some of sim-racing’s most prestigious competitions. This season, Verstappen's sim-racing obsession has sometimes collided with his day job. He pulled off an incredible feat in May, claiming victory at Formula 1’s Emilia Romagna Grand Prix in real life while simultaneously winning the virtual 24 Hours of Nürburgring with Team Redline, all thanks to a sim rig set up in his mobile home, which he played in between his F1 duties. Then, in July, Verstappen won the virtual 24 Hours of Spa, racing until 3 a.m. on Sunday morning before competing in the Hungarian Grand Prix. His real-life performance—fifth place after qualifying third and a race spent berating his team—lead Red Bull to request that he not sim race quite so late during Formula 1 weekends.
For Small, the opportunity to face Verstappen was a much more fun, less-weighty experience.
“I say I ‘raced’ against him,” Small laughs. “I saw him on the start line—and that was the last time I saw him.” Verstappen beat Small by 22 seconds while racing a Hyundai Elantra TCR around the Nordschleife. Verstappen, according to Small, was not chatting in the lobby, though he’s been known to interact with viewers on his Twitch streams from time to time.
Reddit is filled with reports of Verstappen sim sightings, with iRacers frequently sharing stories of being blown past by the Dutch phenom or, on rare occasion, catching a lucky slipstream and briefly passing him.
Corey Wise, a 31-year-old from St. Louis, Missouri, faced Verstappen twice in iRacing after he joined a lobby that Team Redline advertised on its Twitch stream.
“The thought of actually racing immediately left my mind,” Wise says. “It kind of became more about being in that lobby than it did about the actual race.”
Racing Porsche GT3s at Spa-Francorchamps, in reverse-grid order, Verstappen diced his way from last to first.
“I can confidently tell you that I was passed by Max Verstappen,” Wise laughs.
For proper professional sim racers who understand every nuance of the esport, Verstappen’s achievements in the virtual world as impressive as what he's done in a Red Bull.
“The amount of prep [for sim racing] is insane,” says Jaden Conwright, a real-life racecar driver and frequent sim racer who has competed against Verstappen—virtually—a handful of times.
“During the virtual Nürburgring 24 Hours, the top teams basically ran qualifying laps, every lap, for nine hours straight,” Conwright explains. “If you lose two seconds somewhere, you’ll never get it back. That’s how much perfection there is with the top-level sim guys.”
What sets Verstappen apart, Conwright says, is his unflappability, never cracking under pressure when drivers are pushing behind him. Also—just as he’s shown in real-life racing—Verstappen has an uncanny attention to detail. There are the small nuances that Verstappen, as well as all of the top drivers, exploit, like turning off the pit limiter and exceeding pit speed limits by a couple kilometers-per-hour (which usually does not draw penalties). But he's also able to translate his IRL talents into the slightly uncanny world of sim-racing.
It's probably no surprise that in the virtual world, Verstappen remains just as aggressive as he is on actual asphalt. But in iRacing, wheel-to-wheel overtakes need to be navigated with a savvier touch—as Conwright notes, the cars often “stick together” and can crash a bit more easily.
“It's not exactly the same as in real life, which is what makes it so crazy what Max can do,” he says.
Conwright tells one story that illustrates just how absurdly dominant Verstappen really is: The flying Dutchman participated in a “setup” sim race in which all drivers used the same car, but had eight hours of practice time to figure out the best configuration.
“My buddy was P1 by a tenth or two, then Max comes in out of nowhere and clears him by a tenth,” Conwright recalls. “Where did he find all this time? Max changed the diff settings and brake bias for every corner for the quali laps to optimize the track. He figured all that out and optimized it… My buddy was like, ‘This guy is crazy.’”
According to Ryan Barneveld, a Dutch professional sim racer whose team took second at the virtual 24 Hours of Nürburgring behind Team Redline, Verstappen’s adaptability is what makes him such a force—in any form of racing.
“The speed at which he can adapt to something new is wild,” Barneveld said. “Every week, or even every day, you can drive a different car and track in the sim, so you need to know what you’re doing and how to extract speed out of it... And in real-life Formula 1, if there is a new track, he’ll jump in the car and will be a second quicker than any other F1 driver for the first 50 minutes. That’s his adaptability.”
Verstappen’s sim-racing exploits have had two major impacts: First, it’s brought a wave of attention to the niche esport, which professionals like Barneveld appreciate. But it’s also increased Verstappen’s own credibility, since the man seems to eat, sleep, and breathe racing (with rumors once suggesting he even had a sim rig on his private plane).
Maybe the greatest testament to Verstappen's talent? His sim-racing talent has made some haters come around on the Dutchman.
“The sim-racing thing has convinced me,” says Chris Rosales, a writer for Motor1 who previously has faced Verstappen in an iRacing open lobby (“I got my ass handed to me,” he laughs).
“In sim racing, at the end of the day you get the same track, same conditions, same cars, and you have to maximize what you have,” Rosales continues. “The fact that even with all conditions equal—not in a Red Bull, not on the best team—he can still pull away… I can’t help but respect what he’s doing there.”
