Max Verstappen gave himself the full dose of motorsport at the Formula 1 weekend in Imola. The world champion not only won the Grand Prix with Red Bull, but was also virtually victorious. With the Redline team he triumphed at the 24h Nürburgring in iRacing. Lando Norris once devoted much of his free time to sim racing. An action like that of his friend Max Verstappen would no longer occur to the McLaren driver today.
“We’ve already won races together, so I’ve had my time,” said Norris when asked why he can no longer be found on the virtual race tracks these days as often as he did in days gone by. His former virtual teammate Max Verstappen sat down on his sim racing setup on Saturday evening after Formula 1 qualifying. Between 8:00 p.m. and 11:00 p.m. he completed three stints in the top split of the 24-hour race at the Nürburgring in his traditional iRacing simulation. On Sunday morning it was the turn of another double stint starting at 8:15 a.m.
“I’ve never tried that, I don’t have a simulator in my motorhome either. I don’t drive as much as I used to because I prefer playing golf. And Max hates golf,” explains Norris with a wink, which Verstappen calls “old man! ” replied. When Norris entered Formula 1 in 2019 at the age of 19, he was something like the F1 poster boy of Generation Z. The race winner has the nerdy Lando, who laughs like a schoolboy at offensive jokes next to Daniel Ricciardo in the press conference Miami GP 2024 has now been left behind.
“I did a lot of it when I was growing up. I think I paid a price for doing so much of it and not doing a lot of other things. In my childhood there was only motorsport, sim racing and school, when I had to go there,” explains the 24-year-old, who can regularly be seen strolling around Monaco on social media.
“I used to have nothing else [als Motorsport] I never went out, didn’t do any of those things, went out with friends. I was a bit of a loner, and I’m making up for lost time now. “That’s why I go out and enjoy other things more than the sim racing stuff,” said Norris. “If I had maybe done less sim racing in the past and did other things, I might do it even more today.”
Norris has different Saturday evening programs
In the past, Verstappen had set up his simulator on the race weekend and ran a virtual competition on Saturday evening. “I never tried that,” Norris said. “But I think that he didn’t have the biggest workload either. Then he probably wouldn’t have done that either. He didn’t drive late, did a few stints. And it’s not a physical thing, it can just put a strain on you mentally . Besides, I probably stayed up longer than him anyway.”
However, Norris was wrong with his last assumption, because Verstappen, like him, watched the boxing match between Tyson Fury and Oleksandr Usyk on Saturday night. “I was in bed around 2 a.m. and got my eight hours of sleep or something. I also watched golf and Indianapolis [Qualifying für das Indy 500]. I had four screens at the start, so I also have my setup, just not a sim racing setup,” laughs the Brit. “I still love it, I also like playing online with my people, but it’s nothing that suits me would come to mind on a Saturday night.”