Verstappen finding joy in his Nürburgring side quest

During the opening lap of last month's NLS2 race at the Nürburgring, Max Verstappen knew he had a race on his hands. A light blue Audi R8 was filling his rearview mirrors, its yellow-tinted headlights a constant reminder that the four-time Formula 1 world champion would not have it easy on this -- or any -- lap while pursuing his self-assigned side quest of preparing for this year's Nürburgring 24 Hours.

Behind the wheel of the Audi was Christopher Haase, a veteran GT racer with more than 15 years of Nürburgring experience, who was relishing the opportunity to race wheel-to-wheel with one of the greatest drivers on the planet.

Haase had qualified 1.974 seconds off Verstappen's pole-position lap earlier the same morning, but as the two cars launched onto the 1.3-mile long Döttinger Höhe straight, it was the more streamlined Audi that got the better exit from the previous corner and slipped past Verstappen's Mercedes-AMG GT3 to take the lead.

What unfolded over the next six laps was a visual representation of why F1's preeminent talent has chosen to spend so many of his free weekends at the Nürburgring lately.

Verstappen's Mercedes remained glued to the tail of Haase's Audi for the vast majority of the first stint -- coming within centimeters at times as he tried to find an opportunity to retake the position.

One lapse of judgement and the consequences could have been unthinkable, but the combination of Verstappen's talent and Haase's immense experience kept the battle clean as millions of fans followed every corner via an onboard YouTube feed from the No. 3 Mercedes.

One week prior, Verstappen had been working his day job as a Red Bull Formula 1 driver at the Chinese Grand Prix. His race lasted 45 of the 56 scheduled laps, and when he spoke to the media after his retirement, his frustration with the premium category's new regulations -- and the style of racing they create -- was clear.

"If someone likes this, then you really don't know what racing is about," he vented about F1's new battery-assisted overtakes. "It's not fun at all. It's playing Mario Kart. This is not racing."

Fast-forward back to the Nürburgring, and as he pushed his Mercedes to the limit through the sweeping bends and blind crests of the legendary Nordschleife (north loop), those frustrations could not be further from his mind. Instead, his thoughts were focused almost entirely on the rear of Haase's Audi and finding a way to get back past the German before he pitted at the end of his first seven-lap stint.

"It's just reminding me what real motorsport is like," Verstappen told ESPN in the Suzuka paddock a week later as he reflected on his latest Nürburgring experience. "I jump out of the car and I'm happy, and that's what I'm trying to chase, instead of coming out of the car and ... not feeling frustrated, but just a bit disappointed, I would say."

In much the same way that Haase had lined up Verstappen's Mercedes on the Döttinger Höhe straight on lap 1, Verstappen did the same on lap 7 as Haase got baulked by slower traffic. Side drafting the Audi to try to overcome his Mercedes' straight-line speed deficit, the images were dramatic as the pair, separated by a hair's width, traded the lead three times by disrupting one another's airflow along the straight.

Verstappen, with the better line as the cars rushed toward the next braking point, finally made the move stick through Tiergarten, before the old Nordschleife circuit rejoined the modern Grand Prix circuit and both cars peeled into the pits for the first of their driver changes in the four-hour race.

"The Audi was a bit faster on the straight, so it was very hard to basically pass him around the lap," Verstappen recalled. "We were close. I thought at one point that my front splitter was under his diffuser!

"And then, of course, he got held up a bit in that final kink [before Döttinger Höhe], so then I had a bit of a run, but even then you could see that I had to like fully side draft to have a go where he completely cleared me in the first lap. And, yeah, it just worked out well at the end. You know, sometimes you need a bit of luck with that as well, to pass, or you get passed because of bad luck then for you."

One week later -- and after his team, Verstappen Racing, was stripped of ultimate victory because of a tire-usage violation -- the four-time F1 champion's enthusiasm for the race was still evident as he recounted the events.

His enthusiasm sits in stark contrast to his comments at the end of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend, in which Verstappen, after finishing a distant eighth in his Red Bull, once again vented his frustrations about the state of modern F1 and admitted he was considering a racing future away from the series at the end of this year.

In that context, his desire to race at the Nürburgring 24 Hours has been portrayed as an antidote or even a substitute for the driving pleasure that he is currently lacking in F1. But Verstappen says his dream of taking part in the event, which holds legendary status among motorsport fans, far predates any of his current frustrations with F1.

"I've been watching it already for a long time," he explained when asked where his desire to race at the 24 Hours comes from. "In the beginning in F1, of course, I wanted to have the success and I wanted to win. That was definitely my pure focus. But now I can do a bit more around it. This was actually the first real possibility to do it."

Verstappen will enter the race in a Red Bull-liveried Mercedes-AMG GT3, run by the experienced Winward Racing team but entered under the name Verstappen Racing. He will share the car with teammates Dani Juncadella, Jules Gounon and Lucas Auer -- each taking their turn behind the wheel in carefully pre-planned stints over the course of the 24 hours.

Last month's NLS2 race was the latest step in Verstappen's preparation for the main event, in which he shared the car over four hours with Juncadella and Gounon. The cancellation of the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix will allow Verstappen to rejoin his teammates this weekend for two further four-hour races on the Nordschleife -- known as the "Qualifiers" -- that represent the dress rehearsal for the 24 Hours on May 16 and 17.

Despite the flurry of preparatory races so far this year, Verstappen's journey toward the 24 Hours started roughly a year ago when Red Bull made a slow start to the 2025 F1 season.

As has been the case this year, his frustration with the situation would occasionally bubble over in post-race comments, and by way of mitigation, Red Bull agreed to Verstappen's request to race at the Nürburgring alongside his F1 commitments.

"They saw how passionate I am about it," Verstappen said of gaining permission from Red Bull. "So, it wasn't hard to convince them, no."

Then-Red Bull Racing advisor Helmut Marko later revealed he had backed Verstappen pursuing his Nürburgring ambitions precisely because his star driver had "lost a little bit of interest" in F1.

By the end of the season, in which Red Bull's performance bounced back and Verstappen ended up two points shy of a fifth world title, Marko felt vindicated and said the net benefit of Verstappen's Nürburgring outings had resulted in a happier Max and as much as 0.2 seconds of lap time benefit in his fight with the McLaren drivers for the world title.

His first lap of the Nordschleife came on a free weekend in May 2025, in which he entered the test session under the pseudonym Franz Hermann. The fake name was picked to try to prevent the test turning into a media circus while sounding "as German as possible."

Remarkably, when "Hermann" took to the track in a Ferrari 296 GT3 car, it was the first time Verstappen had negotiated the real-world 15.183-mile layout in any vehicle. A keen sim racer, he had completed "thousands" of laps in the virtual world, and it was that simulator experience that meant he was able to get up to speed incredibly quickly.

"I knew where I had to go," he said of the transition from virtual reality to the most daunting racetrack on earth. "The only thing was that I needed to understand a few bumps, the grip level of different surfaces. A few curbs had changed, but overall it was super accurate [on the sim].

"It was not like I went out, it was super intimidating or whatever. It was fine, actually. It helps also when the car is well balanced and you very quickly get more confidence."

Although times from his first test were not made public, Verstappen later confirmed he beat the official lap record for an NLS-spec car that same day. Considering some drivers spend a lifetime trying to master the 160-plus corners of the circuit, Verstappen's ability to get up to speed was remarkable.

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But one thing that no amount of simulator time can replicate are the risks involved when racing on the Nordschleife. The circuit is one of the few in the world that has a Wikipedia page listing the number of fatalities recorded in official competition and test days, and has even more regularly taken the lives of overly enthusiastic amateurs.

Despite the ongoing efforts of the circuit's owners, the nature of the track means safety can only ever be improved to a point, with the racing line in several high-speed sections just a few meters away from the steel guardrails lining the track.

"I'm aware that I can have a bad crash there, but I'm not afraid -- I like it, actually," Verstappen said. "I really enjoy driving there, it gives me a smile on my face.

"Every time I jump out of the car, I'm happy. That's also what I'm after, to be honest, to have fun. I know it's a dangerous track, but I'm happy to take that risk."

Jackie Stewart, a three-time F1 champion and three-time winner at the Nürburgring, gave the circuit its "Green Hell" nickname on account of the dangers drivers faced in the 1960s and 1970s. Speaking about the version of the circuit he knew, Stewart once said "anybody who says they liked the original circuit is either telling a fib or they didn't go fast enough."

But while the modern-day version still encapsulates the mythology of the circuit's grand prix years, Verstappen says the reality of driving the track has changed.

"I agree from an F1 point of view, and especially in the '60s and '70s, but the track has changed a lot, I would say, compared to then. So, it's a bit different," he said. "Now, I think it's fine. Yeah, I mean, you can crash anywhere. It's dangerous in a lot of different circuits ... I mean, [Suzuka] is dangerous as well. It just depends how you look at it."

F1 stopped racing at the Nordschleife for safety reasons after Niki Lauda nearly lost his life in a fiery accident at the Bergwerk section of the circuit in 1976. Despite F1's absence, sports car racing continued at the track -- Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff was among those brave enough to race at the track and attempt an ill-fated lap record in 2009 -- with the annual 24-hour race becoming the circuit's headline event in recent decades.

The modern GT3 cars that compete in the fastest class at the Nürburgring 24 Hours (known as SP9) are also far safer than the F1 cars of the 1960s and '70s. They are, of course, significantly slower than modern-day F1 cars, but Verstappen says the reduced speed takes nothing away from the challenge.

"Anything that you drive on the limit is always difficult, I think," he said. "It doesn't matter if that's a GT car, F1 car, whatever, in between or below. I mean, I drove the GT4 car downtuned for my license, but I still drove that to the limit, so then it still becomes tricky."

Despite his headline-grabbing lap times during his recent visits, Verstappen says he still has more performance locked away for next month's 24 Hours -- assuming he can get a clean lap.

"Everyone has stuff left [for the 24 Hours], for sure," he said. "But it depends on traffic around the lap, right? So it's always very difficult to judge, you know, if someone did like the perfect lap ... well, the perfect lap, anyway, it doesn't exist around there."

It raises the question of whether the difficulty of obtaining a perfect lap is another part of the circuit's appeal for Verstappen.

"Yeah, but you also know that it will not happen," he says. "I mean, I've done like thousands of laps on the simulator, and you never hit the perfect lap.

"You are close sometimes, but there's always like one or two corners where you're like, 'I really like lost a tenth,' or 'I just made a mistake.' It's impossible just to nail every single corner around there."

Verstappen's lap times so far have made him immediately competitive against extremely experienced competition. Although race lap times are often dictated by traffic, yellow flags and Code 60 zones (sections of the track where cars are limited to 60km/h to allow marshals onto the track), Verstappen's best race lap at NLS2 was 5.4 seconds clear of the fastest time set by teammate Gounon and 13.8 seconds clear of Juncadella's best.

Likewise, despite battling with Haase in the opening stint, his average lap times were more than five seconds clear of the third-fastest SP9 driver, Augusto Farfus.

But while Verstappen and his teammates clearly have the performance to target victory in the 24 Hours, he is not underestimating the quality of his competition or the difficulty of the event.

"The level is high, it's super high," he says. "Of course, maybe some people don't know some of the drivers because they're not so much into GT racing, but there are a lot of really good, even older -- like very experienced -- drivers."

It is the experience level that Verstappen admits he is still lacking. The Eifel mountains in which the circuit is located are known for changeable conditions, with fog, driving rain and even snow among the possible weather events that could feature either day or night. So far, Verstappen has only driven the circuit in daylight and has been lucky enough to experience dry conditions each time.

"I need a little bit more experience in general," Verstappen says when asked what he still needs to work on ahead of the 24 Hours. "I would like to maybe drive towards the night or close to the night. Just to have an idea. I'm not worried about it. I just want to do it. The only opportunity for that, I think, is in one of the qualifier races.

"So, I need to have a look at that. The rest is all just procedures with the team, that we are all well aligned with that. And then just fine tuning the setup even further.

"Also, at the Nordschleife the weather can be different in one part to the other part of the track. Stuff like that can happen there."

But to focus purely on Verstappen's finishing position at the 24 Hours would be to miss the point. With longer-term plans for Verstappen Racing, it's clear the 29-year-old is passionate about GT racing and there's something about the paddock, atmosphere and challenge of racing at the Nürburgring that is truly unique.

"It's a bit more old school," he says. "It's still nice to see the passionate fans -- they can basically touch the car in the paddock because they can get so close. Yeah, it's a bit different ... different vibes, but I like it.

"It's just going a bit more back to how I grew up in racing. There are professional teams but you also have amateur teams, and everything just races together. They're all there for the love of motorsport, I would say."

As for Verstappen's own love of motorsport, he insists it is as strong as ever despite his recent comments on the current state of F1. Taking part in the Nürburgring 24 Hours, he says, is just another way of expressing that love.

"I don't think it has [changed], because it just shows that my love, it's not only around Formula 1. I love racing. I love competing," he said. "Just going back to a bit more old-school, proper racing, that's what I'm trying to seek. And that's what I get from driving at the Nordschleife."