Max Verstappen looked back on his incredible challenge against 100 karting drivers at Silverstone, marked by a completely chaotic first lap.
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Max Verstappen needed only 35 minutes to overtake 100 opponents in a rather unusual challenge organized by Red Bull at Silverstone. Starting in 101st and last position on Wednesday, the four-time Formula 1 world champion eventually managed to climb through the entire field to win.
A spectacular performance, but the most delicate part took place right from the first moments. With more than a hundred karts grouped on the track, the first corner quickly turned into a real traffic jam. Verstappen explains that he essentially relied on his instinct to avoid accidents and find the necessary spaces.
A completely chaotic start
As soon as the lights went out, the Dutchman had to temporarily leave the track to bypass the chaos caused by the impressive pack. With so many competitors grouped in the same place, anticipating the trajectories of other drivers was practically impossible.
Verstappen therefore claims to have reacted instantly to what was happening in front of him, while having to trust the participants to avoid the most dangerous maneuvers.
“You simply act on instinct based on what happens. When the lights go out, you look where the spaces are and you also have to trust a few people around you not to do anything completely crazy.”
The Red Bull driver was also pleasantly surprised by the behavior of his opponents towards him. Despite several collisions between participants, no one really tried to push him off the track.
“They were very enthusiastic among themselves, but they were actually quite nice to me by avoiding hitting me. You just have to react very quickly when everything is happening in front of you.”
Verstappen just wanted to survive
For Verstappen, the first minutes of the challenge were therefore less about overtaking and more about the need to stay clear of incidents. Once the pack was sufficiently spread out, the exercise became much closer to a real comeback.
“The first half of the race is simply chaos. You mostly try to survive and then you start chasing them.”
As the number of competitors decreased, Verstappen could focus more on his pace and catch his opponents one by one.
“It’s quite enjoyable from the moment you just have to chain your own laps and catch them one after the other.”
But his comeback had actually started much faster than he himself had imagined.
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61 opponents overtaken on the first lap
Before the start, Verstappen had set himself a deliberately ambitious goal: to overtake about forty drivers during the first lap. The chaos in front of him ultimately allowed him to do even better.
“Before the race, I said: let’s be ambitious and say that I will overtake 40 people on the first lap. Then, they told me I had overtaken 61, I think.”
The many incidents between his opponents obviously facilitated this spectacular progress. Verstappen nevertheless had to manage to weave through stopped or slowed karts without being involved in an accident himself.
“So it was a good start. I just had to stay out of trouble. Some people really got carried away and there was a kind of blockade in front of me, but I managed to get around it.”
After this first lap, Verstappen was already around 40th position, turning a challenge that seemed almost impossible into a much more realistic goal.
Verstappen knew he could win
As the final minutes approached, overtaking naturally became more difficult since only the fastest competitors remained ahead of him. Among his last opponents were notably Dutch journalist Jacky Martens and Louis Osler, a member of the Red Bull team.
A few contacts later, Verstappen finally managed to take the lead over the last competitor and finish his incredible comeback after about 35 minutes of racing.
The four-time world champion admits, however, that he had identified even before the start that victory was possible. His preparation laps had allowed him to compare his own times with those set by other participants during qualifying.
“I knew my lap times after the preparation sessions and I also knew the times of others in qualifying. So I knew that victory was possible.”
Everything nevertheless depended on his ability to get through the first laps without losing too much time in traffic or being involved in a collision.
“But it really depended on my first two laps. They went better than expected, so that helped me a lot.”
With 61 opponents already cleared at the end of the first lap and the other 39 gradually overtaken afterwards, Verstappen ultimately succeeded in his bet: starting behind 100 drivers and overtaking them all in just 35 minutes.
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