With F1 currently having a week’s break, Max Verstappen is back to doing what he usually does—sim racing. The Dutchman is so fond of racing that when he is not competing in real life, he makes it a point to compete against the very best virtually.
But his goal remains the same no matter where he competes—that is to win. However, the 27-year-old recently suffered a loss despite successfully recreating Lewis Hamilton’s epic overtaking moment from the 2022 British Grand Prix.
Back then, the former Mercedes driver was involved in a three-way fight with Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Red Bull’s Sergio Perez. With the Monegasque and Mexican fighting it hard for second place, Hamilton took advantage of the situation and ended up passing them both from fourth when his two rivals went deep into the Club corner.
On seeing the move that Hamilton pulled off, Sky Sports F1 commentator David Croft famously said, “And through goes Hamilton”. Verstappen attempted the same in his recent sim race, but navigating that battle might’ve cost him the victory.
Two of his Team Redline mates were fighting it out for position when an opportunistic Verstappen made a move on both of them. That led one of his mates to say, “Through goes Verstappen”, with the Dutchman letting out a laugh. Despite making such overtakes, he failed to win the race, one he found very tiring as he said, “I’m sweating” after it.
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However, that did not prevent him from having a good mood, which is quite rare when he fails to win an F1 race. Considering how competitive Verstappen is, no matter if he races in real life or virtually, one would easily expect him to feel annoyed.
The Red Bull F1 driver does take sim racing very seriously as well, as he believes doing well in this has also helped him during actual Grand Prix weekends. Verstappen is so serious when it comes to sim racing that if there is an important virtual race during an actual F1 Grand Prix weekend, he makes it a point to take part in both.
Once doing so also got him in trouble with his Red Bull bosses. Reports emerged last year that Red Bull had banned him from sim racing during Grand Prix weekends after he seemed overly annoyed during the Hungarian GP.
Verstappen had quite the heated exchanges with his race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase during that race, which perhaps led Red Bull to take such action. However, if Verstappen’s remarks are to be believed, he was never banned from sim racing, but he and his team did have a conversation about it.
“No, it’s not like I have a ban,” Verstappen was quoted in a report from De Telegraaf. “We talked about it and I said they don’t have to worry because there’s no sim race on the schedule for a while. But I also don’t have to tell them what they can do in their private time during a race weekend.”
