Few can say they have raced against Max Verstappen -- even if they can only boast that they stayed in front of him for all of 10 seconds.
That was about as long as my challenge lasted in Max vs 100, a wonderfully simple concept on Disney+: put four-time world champion Verstappen at the back of a 101-kart grid at Silverstone and give him 30 laps to pass everybody in front of him. Once he passed you, your race was over.
Starting 89th, I was eliminated before my kart had even reached the front of the grid we were all racing from.
A humbling experience, no doubt: but should an amateur karter going up against one of the greatest drivers of all time have expected any different?
It wasn’t just me who had a blink-and-you-missed-it moment against Verstappen. He dispatched an astonishing 64 drivers in that first lap alone and needed only 13 more to catch and overtake everyone else.
Verstappen enjoyed it so much he teased doing it again next year against 200. Seeing how quickly he got things done on Wednesday, you would not bet against him completing that challenge with a handful of laps to spare, either.
Starting as low as I did, there was probably not much chance of any other outcome for me. I already had the excuses ready to explain my lowly grid slot. A spin during one-shot qualifying had turned what was already a middling-to-below-average lap into one only good enough to occupy the 45th row of the grid. Shoot. A blow, I told myself, of getting down to Turn 1 in one piece and an even bigger blow for my chances of staying ahead of Verstappen for even a few corners. Perhaps a better lap and grid position would have given me a better buffer to prevent the inevitable, I reasoned, while Verstappen struggled to get past the slower karts in the field.
- Max vs 100: Verstappen jokes taking on ’200′ drivers next time
- Max Verstappen wins Max vs 100 in style after overtaking 100 go-karters
Turns out the excuses weren’t necessary -- an improved grid spot wouldn’t have made a shred of difference. As the red lights at the beginning of the start procedure went on one by one, Verstappen had rocked his kart backwards and forwards in a bouncing motion, an old trick he said he learned racing as a seven-year-old. It meant his kart was already rolling well enough to breeze past the karts nearest to him as the lights turned green.
I knew no such tricks, so like the majority of the other amateurs, moved off the line sluggishly as I set about looked for a racing line through the blur of cars down towards Turn 1.
Approximately 10 seconds later, as some space opened up around me as I came off the curve and onto the straight, I glanced to my right.
There he was.
And then, he wasn’t.
Verstappen breezed on by as though he was driving a different category of vehicle altogether. As that part of the field got to the first corner, karts were spinning left and right, but he threaded through the chaos like a slalom skier, at one stage simply taking to the grass when the conventional route vanished. My own kart got turned around -- perhaps because I was as much watching the disappearing Verstappen as I was the disappearing bit of unoccupied tarmac in front of me. It is easy to forget when watching trackside or TV the remarkable control of a vehicle professionals had -- Verstappen seemed to be racing on rails, even when he was driving off track to pass karts facing the wrong way.
So that was it. 10 seconds after racing Verstappen had started, my race against Verstappen was over. Brutal stuff indeed.
It all happened so fast that some of the 64 who slowly trundled back into the pit lane after elimination were not even convinced they had seen Verstappen go by. By the time I was out of the kart, he was up to 20th.
“I think the first lap went a bit better than expected, so that helps a lot,” Verstappen said later.
Organisers had set a limit of 30 laps but that seemed ludicrously generous as he scythed his way through the field. There had been talk beforehand about trying to defend, working together or even making Verstappen fight for each position. When asked about advice for the 100 karters ahead of the event, Verstappen’s long-time rival George Russell had joked that participants should try and go four or five-wide and effectively block the road to stop him advancing. There was, of course, not even the slightest bit of coordination between anyone at the back of the field once the lights went out. Even if we had, Verstappen appeared more than happy to take to the grass on a couple of occasions to get to where he needed to be.
“You just act on instinct, whatever happens when the lights go out, you kind of just see where the gaps are and then you also kind of need to trust the few people around you that they don’t do anything crazy,” Verstappen said later. “But to be honest, they didn’t.”
Even if no-one was driving like crazy, the chaos at the start was predictable. Race director and circuit designer David Terrien -- who raced against Max’s parents Jos Verstappen and Sophie Kumpen when they were junior karters -- later said he doubted there has ever been a kart race featuring 101 karts. That’s not surprising, as there did not seem to be quite enough road to accommodate everyone at the beginning. The grid stretched down the main straight and around a curve. The first lap was almost immediately put under caution -- there were spins, mine included, at Turn 1, while two karts crashed at Turn 3 further up the track so badly that a group of 10 karts got stuck behind.
The circuit worked well when the field had been trimmed down, though, with Verstappen’s progress slowing as the amateurs on track were wittled down. He spent six laps in fourth, slowly reeling in the runaway trio at the front.
Verstappen ended up beating one journalist who did, at least, manage to do a better job of representing for the F1 paddock: Dutch reporter Jacky Martens, who finished ahead of YouTuber Zac Alsop and Red Bull’s own Lewis Osler to be crowned best of the amateurs. Those last laps were entertaining to watch on the stream, as Verstappen got to utilise the microphones he had fitted to his balaclava to talk to the other competitors around him. “I’m coming for you,” he said to a contestant at one stage. Later, he told commentators Alex Jacques and Matt Gallagher: “They need to focus because I’m definitely catching them.”
Several of those who remained at least got to properly experience what racing Verstappen is all about. Late in the contest, one of the racers joked to Verstappen -- via a microphone which linked the Dutchman to drivers he approached -- that all he could hear in his head was the famous song about him: “Duh Duh Duh Duh, Max Verstappen, Duh Duh Duh Duh.”
Another turned to Verstappen as he approached, laughing and putting his hands together as if begging him not to overtake. He’s not the only one to have felt like this with the Dutchman approaching him at alarming speed. McLaren CEO Zak Brown joked last year, as Verstappen started reeling in McLaren pair Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri in the championship, that Verstappen was like the T-Rex in Jurassic Park, seen chasing the car in the mirror with the warning ‘Objects in the mirror are closer than they appear.’ My experience of being passed by Verstappen was so quick I didn’t even get the chance to experience the fear.
For Verstappen, it seemed like enormous fun -- he later said he had not driven a proper go-kart since 2016. In a year which has seen Verstappen’s love of Formula 1 tested on a massive scale, he later joked he would cherish his winners’ trophy as it was his first of the year so far.
Verstappen recently signed a contract to stay in Formula 1 with Red Bull into 2030, ending several years of speculation about moves elsewhere. It’s perhaps not surprising he can’t imagine a future away from the company which first brought him into Formula 1 as a 17-year-old in 2015. “It’s just great that with Red Bull they always come up with some crazy fun things and it suits me as well,” he said. “I can really be myself and I think also the way it was organised today, I know that it requires a lot of effort to be able to do something like this.”
Whether I’ll be there on the grid with him for a future event remains to be seen -- if Wednesday’s contest had been an audition to race against a Formula 1 legend again, I dismally failed.
But, given how Verstappen did make almost 100 people look like complete amateurs, there doesn’t seem to be too much shame in that.
