Max Verstappen has revealed how a daring overtake he performed at Spa-Francorchamps in 2015 got him in hot water with Red Bull chief Helmut Marko.
Verstappen‘s first year in F1 had some eye-catching moments as the 17-year-old set out to impress the world, with one particular moment at Blanchimont resulting in a successful and sensational overtake that was too much even for Marko.
Verstappen had been given the nod to race for Red Bull‘s junior team Toro Rosso in 2015, where he was partnered with Carlos Sainz.
The Dutch driver duly impressed over the course of the year, with the 17-year-old showing fearlessness in battle that resulted in him putting in a lot of the groundwork that led to his Red Bull promotion the following season.
This fearlessness was fully evident at Spa-Francorchamps where, during the Belgian Grand Prix, Verstappen caught the Sauber of Felipe Nasr and dispatched the Brazilian with an audacious overtake around the outside of Blanchimont – Spa’s fearsomely fast high-speed left-hander where contact would have resulted in a massive accident.
The now-three-time F1 World Champion had been training on iRacing with Atze Kerkhof, now of Team Redline – Verstappen’s sim racing squad under the Verstappen.com racing umbrella – and had practiced the move, albeit only in the virtual world.
“I met Atze during my F3 season. I was driving for Van Amersfoort and you spend time on the simulator preparing,” Verstappen said on the Off The Beaten Track documentary.
“Back in the day, my engineer there, Rick, he said, ‘We have this really good simulator guy that comes in to practice, he’s done it before with other drivers for us.’”
Kerhof picks up the story and said: “In the beginning, it was mainly to drive with me, to train. We did a lot of one-on-one training in iRacing, where we practiced overtaking on certain tracks. iRacing had the laser-scanned version of Spa Francorchamps.
“Normally, [Blanchimont is] not a corner where you would consider overtaking. In a sim, it’s a bit easier.”
Verstappen laughed: “That was more for fun that we tried it on the simulator with the F1 cars at the time, and I’d see what kind of angles you could overtake. We also crashed in Blanchimont, touching each other!
“I think the F1 cars that we had on the game, were a bit slower in terms of top speed and had a bit more downforce.”
Getting alongside Nasr on the outside, Verstappen kept the boot in as the pair swept through Blanchimont at top speed and managed to keep in position to then take the inside line into the Bus Stop Chicane.
Had the move happened today, it’s unlikely Verstappen would have been permitted to keep the position as he had gone outside the white lines and fully onto the kerbing, only adding to the instability as he kept his foot planted.
“So, when I went for the move in real life,” Verstappen continued, “I had more top speed and less downfall so, at the moment, the car was moving around a little bit more.”
Jos Verstappen revealed his nervousness at having watched such a high-speed move play out.
“I heard of that story, but that was afterwards,” he said.
“I knew when he was side by side that he would not give up, but I didn’t know at that time, when it happened, that he already practiced that on the sim.”
But while the move paid off in the end, Verstappen revealed that neither his father nor others at Red Bull had been particularly pleased by his audacious risk-taking, feeling it had been a step too far.
“It was fun. At the time, I enjoyed it a lot,” Verstappen said.
“Helmut [Marko] came to me straight after the race and he told me never to do that again.
“I was like: ‘I passed him, it’s okay.’ Now I understand why.
“I was 17 still, I thought, ‘I’ll go for it.’”
Speaking from a very different position in his life nine years later, having won three World titles and well on the way to his fourth, Verstappen said it’s unlikely he’d take risks like that Blanchimont move nowadays.
“Probably I wouldn’t do it now, no,” he said.
“It’s not worth the risk of doing it. I would have easily maybe passed in the next corner or whatever but, at the time, I was like: ‘I don’t care. I will show everyone that it is possible.’”
