One thing I have in common with Formula 1 champion Max Verstappen: we both stay up way too late playing video games.
Of course, you’ll probably find me messing around at 3am. Minecraftwhile Verstappen is seriously fighting in digital endurance races with his esports crew, Team Redline.
After the Hungarian Grand Prix in July, Verstappen saw become noticeably snippy on team radio and a mistake that left him flying through the air after a collision with Lewis Hamilton, pundits in the Formula 1 world began to ask themselves key questions: Has Verstappen not matured as a driver since the heated 2021 championship?
No, just kidding. They started asking him too late if he was grumpy from gaming.
Photo by Kym Illman/Getty Images
This followed the news that Verstappen had made an early morning drive in iRacing’s 24 Hours of Spa event. In endurance racing, each car is driven by a team of drivers who take turns behind the wheel. Verstappen’s shift reportedly kept him awake until 3pm on Sunday morning, the day of the Hungarian Grand Prix. And he was indeed bone later that day on the radio.
“It’s quite impressive how we allowed ourselves to be undermined and completely ruined my race,” he told his race engineer – one of many complaints about issues ranging from the handling of his car to the behaviour of other drivers.
Commentators — notably the SkySports F1 team — harped on the perceived problem during the broadcast. But sim racing is not a new hobby for Verstappen. Many Formula 1 drivers play video gamesbut Verstappen does it semi-professionally and he is very good at it.
As recently as January he led rFactor 2’s virtual 24 Hours of Le Mans, and criticized the event organizers when technical problems forced his team to retire. “It’s either amazing bad luck or just incompetence. (…) This is the third time this has happened to me, that I’ve been kicked out of the game while I’m doing this race,” he complained. (…) Honestly, it’s a joke. You can’t even call this an event. It’s a clown show.”
(You’ll notice that Verstappen’s blunt speeches aren’t limited to the times when he’s up until 3am)
Since then, Verstappen has switched to the iRacing platformapparently with great success. He was until late in the sim race before winning the Saudi Arabian Grand Prix in March, and before taking home an F1 trophy at Imola in May he and Team Redline won the 24 Hours of Nürburgring.
As usual, the problem was further compounded when the English-language press picked up comments from Red Bull’s advisor and head of the driver development programme, Helmut Marko. In his blog on SpeedweekMarko wrote: “Max Verstappen was quite sensitive this weekend and it didn’t take long for the criticism to spread – no wonder, considering he spends half the night playing sim racing.”
He continued: “We have agreed that he will not run any more simulations at this late date.”
In the same post, Marko acknowledges that the upgrades to the Red Bull car still left them at a frustrating pace disadvantage compared to McLaren… but enough about That.
Headlines spread in the F1 media world reporting that Max Verstappen was a “Curfew“and I’ve been told to”stop gaming.”
The day after Verstappen denied that he had been given a curfew or a digital race ban.
“I don’t have to tell them what to do in their private time on the weekend, and that goes for me too,” he said at the press conference ahead of the Belgian Grand Prix on Thursday. “For me it’s not something new, I’ve been doing this since 2015, so for me it’s not something that’s different in my preparation.”
He added: “I’ve won three world championships – I think I have a pretty good idea of what I can and can’t do.”
The problem, I dare say, is not the gaming, but anyone who takes what Helmut Marko says seriously. Marko is constantly bragging in the press, and was reportedly told to stop speaking in public during the investigation into allegations of sexual harassment against Red Bull team boss Christian Horner earlier this year. Marko has racist comments about his own driver, drama about power struggle fueled within the team, and does not hesitate to gossip about his rivals —including supporting Felipe Massa’s small bid to overturning the race that gave Lewis Hamilton a championship in 2008.
Basically, if Helmut Marko gets the chance to stir things up, he takes it.
As for whether I game too much, I admit that I’m not doing my job very well when I stay up late gaming. But Verstappen is a professional athlete with three championships to his name, and I trust his judgment when it comes to his extracurricular activities.
Lewis Hamilton faced similar criticism over his commitment to the sport (including by Helmut Marko, of course) after attending the 2021 Met Gala — he won the next race, reminding everyone that you can indeed have interests outside of Formula 1 and still compete.
The bias against athletes who play games is most apparent in the NFL, where Cardinals player Kyler Murray’s a ‘study clause’ was added to the contract, to commit him to four hours a week of studying the game (football) without the distractions of video games, TV or internet browsing. It is condescending to treat professional athletes in this way, and I would hate to see Red Bull apply a similar mindset to Verstappen who, perhaps more than anyone else on the grid, lives and breathes Racing.
I think the real problem is that Verstappen is facing a championship challenge for the first time since the controversial 2021 season. Having spent two years in what is undoubtedly the fastest car, he has been remarkably cheerful and calm on the radio as he cruises to victory by large margins.
He still leads the drivers’ championship this year, but his team-mate Sergio Perez is only seventh in the standings – behind both McLarens and both Ferraris – which perhaps indicates how well the Red Bull car compares to the competition in the hands of a regular driver.
Verstappen will likely still win the championship this year — barring any real disasters, he has a comfortable lead over second-placed Lando Norris, and Norris isn’t the only other driver gunning for top-place points. But he no longer leads by ten seconds in every race.
That’s stressful! We saw that stress in Verstappen’s battles with Norris during the British Grand Prix, and in Hungary when he blocked and hit Hamilton.
Max Verstappen is not grumpy because he is gaming too late at night. He is being challenged for race wins again — and for all Formula 1 fans, that is great.