For the past two years, Max Verstappen has been acting out his frustrations with Formula 1 by dabbling in other forms of motorsport beyond his long-established fondness for online sim racing.
In 2024 Verstappen won the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix from pole position, dovetailing this with stints in the virtual Nurburgring 24 Hours on the iRacing platform – which his team also won. He later applied his name to a real-world team racing in the GT World Challenge Europe – and, having grown increasingly disenchanted with Red Bull’s performance through the 2025 F1 season, he successfully contested a round of the Nurburgring Langstrecken-Serie (NLS) between the Azerbaijan and Singapore Grands Prix.
Last weekend he joined Lucas Auer, Daniel Juncadella and Jules Gounon to make his ‘real’ Nurburgring 24 Hours debut in a Mercedes-AMG GT3. The car was comfortably in the lead when it halted with driveshaft failure during Juncadella’s stint with three hours remaining.
It’s rare for current F1 drivers to switch series mid-season. Fernando Alonso sat out the 2016 Monaco Grand Prix to contest the Indianapolis 500 and Nico Hulkenberg co-drove the 2015 Le Mans 24 Hours-winning Porsche, but interests outside F1 have generally been viewed as an unwelcome distraction for drivers.
Nevertheless the entire F1 paddock took an interest in Verstappen’s exploits at the Nurburgring, even if not all of the drivers were quite so eager to follow his example.
“No, I’m quite happy with F1,” said Oliver Bearman when asked if he would consider doing a race such as the Nurburgring 24 Hours. “We have enough at the moment.
“But what Max has shown is that every category has its own nuances and fun parts. And I think endurance is something really, really cool and unique inside of motorsport.
“However, Max has won four world titles and is one of the best drivers, if not the best driver on the grid. So I think you need to earn it – earn the right to go and explore other categories and that’s not something I’ve done.”
It hasn’t always been like this
Oliver Bearman, Haas F1 Team
Photo by: Guido De Bortoli / LAT Images via Getty Images
When the number of races on the F1 calendar barely stretched into double digits, top-line drivers regularly contested other categories. Until the 1970s, sportscar racing was generally more lucrative in terms of prize money.
That began to change as F1 became more widely televised and achieved greater global attention during the 1980s. By the following decade, calendar expansion and the increased testing demands of F1 sent the number of current grand prix drivers competing in sportscars into steep decline.
Until Hulkenberg’s 2015 Le Mans win, the last active F1 driver to win the 24 Hours was Yannick Dalmas in 1994 – and, since he only contested two grands prix that season, considering him a ‘current’ F1 driver is stretching the definition somewhat.
Aside from the calendar demands, increasing professionalism made it problematic for drivers contracted to manufacturer F1 teams to race for other brands elsewhere. Also, commercial rights holder Bernie Ecclestone was famously averse to anything which drew attention and potential investment from F1 – hence a grand prix was usually scheduled against Le Mans on the same weekend.
2015 was a rare occasion in which there was no grand prix clashing with Le Mans – but when Hulkenberg returned to the F1 paddock in Austria the following weekend, he was quickly summoned to Ecclestone’s motorhome and firmly instructed to cease talking about his 24 Hours win.
Ecclestone’s reign may be consigned to history but F1 is now a bigger business than ever, so there are pressing reasons for the focus not to shift elsewhere. There are also 24 grands prix weekends a year, which narrows down the opportunities for outside interests even if there are no clashes with Le Mans.
Nico Hulkenberg, Audi F1 Team
Photo by: Clive Mason/Getty Images
When Verstappen contested the virtual Nurburgring 24 Hours in 2024, he had his own sim rig custom-built to fit in his motorhome.
It was understood that neither Red Bull team principal Christian Horner nor ‘driver advisor’ Helmut Marko were particularly enamoured of these extracurricular activities – but as a multiple world champion and the team’s prize asset, Verstappen could not be refused.
A driver in only their second full season of F1 has rather less influence.
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