Max Verstappen needed 14 laps and 35 minutes to overtake 100 amateur drivers at Silverstone on Wednesday, winning Red Bull’s “Max vs 100” exhibition go-kart race with 21 laps and 40 minutes of the permitted distance still unused.
The four-time Formula 1 world champion started 101st and last on a purpose-built circuit that stitched together Silverstone’s karting venue and a section of the grand prix track at Brooklands, with every driver he passed required to retire on the spot. He was given a maximum of 35 laps and 75 minutes. He used fewer than half of each.
Dutch F1 journalist Jacky Martens, who had taken pole in qualifying, was the last man standing and was dispatched by a dive-bomb into a braking zone. “Oh, that was simply lovely, wasn’t it,” Verstappen said over the radio. “I think this was my best one yet.”
Sixty-four places on the opening lap
The first lap decided the shape of the afternoon. With 101 karts of identical specification funnelling into the opening complex, the field folded in on itself — spins, contact and a multi-kart pile-up that brought out a full-course yellow. Verstappen cut across the grass to avoid the carnage and emerged 37th, having gained 64 positions in roughly two minutes.
From there it became methodical. He was inside the top 25 by the start of lap four, had eliminated 84 rivals by lap five and broke into the top 10 on lap six. By lap 10 he was fourth, leaving only Martens, Red Bull Powertrains technician Lewis Osler and YouTuber Zac Alsop between him and the finish.
The field was drawn from content creators, athletes and broadcasters rather than racing drivers — off-road motorcyclist Pol Tarres, mountain biker Bernard Kerr, photographer Larry Chen and actor Neo Yau all finished inside the top 10 — and the rulebook was deliberately loose. Corner-cutting was permitted, and the race director handed the leading amateurs an extra shortcut lap to slow the inevitable. Verstappen’s radio message to the grid before the start set the tone: “It’s not a charity event.”
Osler finished third behind Martens, with Alsop fourth. The event was broadcast live worldwide on Disney+.
Why a kart race mattered to Verstappen
The line that travelled furthest was the one Verstappen delivered almost as an aside: “This is my first win of the year, so I take this one.”
It is not a joke. Verstappen is winless through the opening 13 rounds of the 2026 season and sits sixth in the drivers’ championship, with five podiums and no pole positions. Red Bull have struggled badly to interpret the sport’s new technical regulations, while Mercedes have not — Kimi Antonelli leads the standings by a wide margin, with team-mate George Russell second and Mercedes comfortably clear in the constructors’ championship. For a driver who won four consecutive titles between 2021 and 2024, a winless September is unfamiliar territory.
That context turned a promotional stunt into something closer to a release valve. Verstappen admitted the grid walk had been sobering — “I saw where I had to start and I was like, oof, that’s very far back” — and described the opening lap as pure survival before it became, in his words, “a bit like just hunting them down.”
It is also consistent with how he has spent the past two years. Verstappen has raced GT machinery, taken on the Nürburgring Nordschleife in endurance competition and maintained a serious sim-racing programme alongside his F1 commitments. Karting is where he started, and the format — one driver, no aerodynamic advantage, 100 obstacles — stripped the exercise back to overtaking ability and nothing else.
What it signals going forward
For Red Bull, the event is a template. F1’s audience growth over the past five years has come disproportionately from streaming and social platforms, and “Max vs 100” was built for both: a simple premise, a countdown clock, a global live broadcast and a field of creators with their own audiences. Expect imitators, including from rival teams with content budgets and a driver who needs a story.
For Verstappen, the calculation is narrower. Ten rounds remain in 2026, and Red Bull’s deficit under the new rules is structural rather than incidental — the kind of problem measured in development cycles, not race weekends. A title defence is gone. What he showed at Silverstone was that the appetite has not gone with it.
Twenty-one laps in hand, on a track he could have driven blindfolded, against opponents who had never raced. Not a meaningful result. But for the first time this year, Verstappen crossed a line first — and he was not about to pretend it meant nothing.
Sports journalist and editor at SportsPortal.net. Covers cricket, football, Formula 1, tennis, and basketball with a focus on how global sports connect with Pakistani audiences. Follows the PSL, Pakistan national cricket team, Premier League, and major international tournaments. Has reported on sports for digital audiences since 2021.
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