"When Max Verstappen has the time to prepare, he’s top 3 in the world": Team Redline's director on the Dutch driver's sim-racing exploits

Azte Kerkhof, Team Redline's director, touched upon Max Verstappen's sim racing skills and claimed that the Dutch driver counts among the top three sim racing drivers in the world. Verstappen's obsession and expertise with sim racing is renowned across the motorsport world, as the three-time world champion also won the Spa 24 Hours Endurance Racing in 2019 with Lando Norris, driving an Audi R8 LMS for Team Redline.

The Red Bull driver is a sim racing regular, and his routine does not change even if he races on Sundays. The 26-year-old does not back away from racing on his simulator the night before the F1 race, and at the same time, he makes sure he delivers top-notch performance on track the next day. Talking about Verstappen's prowess on the racing simulator, Kerkhof said,

"He’s breathing racing in a way. He can jump in any car and he’s fast. What u can’t expect from an F1 driver is that he’s so fully dedicated to sim racing. But he wants it so much, like he's has had races where he did 50 hours of practice, and then he did the race," Kerkhof said in Viaplay's documentary on Max Verstappen, Off The Beaten Track.

"And he completely destroyed the field, and those were the best drivers in world. So we know that when he has the time to prepare, he is actually in the top three of the world. Yeah, that's quite nice to work with," he added.

Max Verstappen joined Team Redline in 2015 when he met with Kerkhof. The latter was working with Van Amersfoort Racing in F3 and he offered the Dutchman an opportunity at Redline.

Team Redline, founded by Dom Duhan in 2020, is one of the top sim racing teams in the world. They were reigning champions in the iRacing World Championship Grand Prix Series from 2012 to 2015.

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"He is basically a racing machine": Red Bull boss lauds Max Verstappen on his dual skills

Max Verstappen looks on whilst being interviewed during the 2018 F1 Esports Pro Draft at the GFinity Arena on November 17, 2018 in Fulham, England. (Photo by Joe Brady/Getty Images)

Red Bull team principal Christian Horner had all the appraisals for Max Verstappen on the latter's racing skills. Besides praising his F1 valiance, Horner also remarked on the Red Bull star's exceptional sim racing expertise. Speaking to "Motorsport" in July this year, Horner said:

"He is basically a racing machine, so it is quite often he is testing different set-ups in the evening and this kind of thing, so it is not unusual for him to be doing that. He has won two races today. One in a BMW M3 and one in a Formula 1 car," Horner said.

Max Verstappen is competing for his fourth straight F1 championship, and as of now, he leads the F1 world championship, ahead of Lando Norris of McLaren.