Max Verstappen knows that he will be criticised after Sunday in F1 Imola GP if he doesn’t do well, since he is also racing in the Nurburgring 24 Hours online.
Even though Red Bull’s Verstappen has been racing online during grand prix weekends before, only now it has come up in the public after fans spotted him at some races. The Dutchman has always been a ESports fan, whether or not he plays the official F1 game.
He has EA Sports as his sponsor as well. He largely plays for Team Redline in various competitions around the globe. The F1 Imola GP weekend will see iRacing host the Nurburgring 24 Hours event and Verstappen is likely to race with his teammates.
He hasn’t yet decided how many hours he can give but he has a sim rig set-up with him especially for the European leg. “It’s not a clash…an endurance race you do with multiple people, right? We’ll see, nothing is fully confirmed yet,” said Verstappen, when asked about the event co-inciding with the Imola GP weekend.
“We’ll see how it goes. Of course this is the priority, but if I have a bit of free time, who knows? Anyways, I don’t have a lot of time, Saturday night and Sunday morning. I have between two and four hours, if I’m going to do it. It depends a bit, how it works out with the times.
“You do have to go to bed on time and get your hours of sleep, of course, to start the Sunday well rested. You can’t decide for everyone what they do on a Saturday night. People can go out for dinner, do crazy things. It’s in my free time and I think I’m professional enough to see for myself what’s OK and what’s not OK.
“I have a full sim rig, yeah. Not the sim rig at home, but I built a new one. It’s important to have a good connection,” summed up Verstappen, who is also aware of the criticism he may get if he doesn’t do well on Sunday. Already, Red Bull started off on a struggle note on Friday, with the Dutchman going off on several occasions.
They hope to solve the problems overnight to be in contention in qualifying and the race as well. “If something goes wrong on Sunday they’ll say so,” agreed Verstappen. “It doesn’t matter to me anyway. Look, as I just said, I think I’m professional enough that I know what can and can’t be done.
“If you don’t go to bed and you don’t sleep, it won’t be good for your race on Sunday. But I think with so many years of experience I do know what to do. I do it all the time. I’ve also been gaming the last few races. None of that matters very much. But people don’t talk about that because I haven’t brought that up. This time I have.”
Here’s what Max Verstappen said after Friday struggle
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