Max Verstappen has recently experienced a rare slump of form by his own lofty standards of the past two years. His P6 result at the 2024 Monaco GP was far from his dominant best in 2022-23, as Red Bull struggled badly in the Principality. Still, the Dutchman accepted his defeat gracefully and even went on to party with MMA kickboxer Rico Verhoeven.
According to @f1gossippofficial on Instagram, Kelly Piquet accompanied Verstappen to a club where Verhoeven was also present. The Dutch kickboxer was quite happy to meet his F1 pal and his girlfriend as seen in the video.
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Rico and Verstappen have been friends for a while, courtesy of being fellow countrymen. Verhoeven, 35, has been competing in MMA competitions in the heavyweight category primarily. He has 64 wins from 74 matches to his name which include 21 knockouts, which is quite the record.
Verhoeven keeps a close tab on Verstappen’s F1 career as well and followed him closely during his 2021 title battle against Lewis Hamilton. As per GP Blog, back at the 2021 Turkish GP, he drew comparisons between kickboxing and F1, while appreciating Max’s persistence to fight for his maiden championship.
“Our sports are intense. A kickboxer can get hit and fall over, Max can end up in the tire pile. Only a handful of people can handle that well. Max is one of them. I’m also very good at it, by the way”, Rico said.
Cut to the 2024 Monaco GP, the Dutch MMA champ was there to support and cheer Verstappen despite it being a challenging weekend for the three-time champion. Even Kelly Piquet attended the prestigious race in the Principality along with her friends, as per her Instagram story.
However, it was eventually a forgettable race result for the Red Bull driver. Struggling throughout the weekend, Verstappen and his team could just not figure out a solution to get on the podium, let alone take the win.
How the dominant Max Verstappen has faced challenges off late
The 2024 Monaco GP could be deemed as an aberration by Red Bull, given the kind of struggles they faced. Max Verstappen was nowhere near the Ferrari and McLaren drivers, qualifying in only sixth place and finishing the race there. The RB20 struggled ever since hitting the track on Friday.
However, this has been a recurring theme across the Miami and Imola GP weekends as well. Especially in Imola, Verstappen was way off the mark on managing his car balance. Red Bull somehow managed to recover their weekend after their simulator driver Sebastian Buemi worked a lot on the balance of the car before Saturday’s qualifying.
Still, the Austrian team were not completely out of the woods in Imola. McLaren were utterly close in qualifying and both Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri missed pole position by a whisker.
Now, this helped Verstappen to lead the race and survive a late charge by Norris to win the Imola GP. However, the 26-year-old could not repeat his heroics in Monaco. Moving on from Monaco after all the party and debriefs, the three-time champion is still not fully confident about the next race in Canada.
