Could the Formula 1 champion do for GT3 sports car racing what Tiger Woods did for golf?
Over the weekend, Max Verstappen, in a high-profile GT3-class debut, won the ninth round of the Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie (NLS) with seeming ease.
Naturally social media went mad. In fairness, most posts were well-informed, with a sensible and deserved tone of adulation for an impressive feat. However, the number of people (perhaps introduced to motorsport by a certain Netflix show) credulously cooing over the Formula 1 world champion’s ability to outbrake an AT3-class Mk7 Golf while at the wheel of a cutting-edge Ferrari 296 GT3 was confounding.
Do these people live in a parallel reality where that is possible only because of Verstappen’s god-given talent? Frighteningly, they might. Or are they just wilfully ignorant of the facts?
But I’m not here to complain. This is a fortuitous and unforeseen development for a class of racing that I love – one that gets shaded by fruitier sports prototype racers in the Hypercar class and F1 itself.
By showing up in a GT3 car and putting on an exhibition in something so different to his Red Bull RB21, Verstappen has drawn more eyeballs to the category than was previously imaginable. His adaptation to everything from ABS to the comparatively huge weight transfer and instability, not to mention the traffic-management element, was dazzling.
It’s also worth mentioning that his quickest lap of 7:51.5 was just two seconds off the outright GT3 lap record. He even indulged in the great Nordschleiffe tradition of overtaking on the grass. In short, the hype was valid.
Liberty Media says F1 generates around 1.6 billion ‘cumulative’ views annually. If GT3 can share in even a tiny fraction of that, it will be very good news for the sport, helping major car makers justify their continued involvement during a turbulent time in the industry. Having a homologation base in the road car line-up can no longer be taken for granted.
Hopefully a wider audience can quickly appreciate how fabulous GT3 cars are to watch. Thanks to those strict homologation rules, these are the most relatable cars in serious racing, both from a visual and a dynamic perspective. And noise, of course.
Strip the livery off two F1 cars and the average fan would struggle to tell them apart. In GT3 you know instantly if an Aston Martin Vantage, Porsche 911, BMW M4 or Ford Mustang is bearing down on you from the noise and headlights, even before the car in fully into view. They’re also hardy enough to tussle like touring cars but have a good degree of exoticism about them.
As for the way Verstappen lives his life as a racing driver, you’ve just got to love it, haven’t you?
He has joined a rarified collection of top F1 drivers who had to scratch another motorsport itch in a fit of pure racing passion. Kimi Räikkönen and Robert Kubica have both dabbled in rallying, for instance. However, what makes Verstappen’s appearance in GT3 racing so laudable is that it happened mid-season. Only the weekend before, he brilliantly won the Azerbaijan Grand Prix. Then to the Green Hell for a busman’s holiday. Result? Same. Next weekend, Singapore. The only recent comparison is Fernando Alonso, who raced in the Indianapolis 500.
Verstappen is also treading in the footsteps of F1 drivers of yore, who would show up in different disciplines to supplement their income or just for the love of racing and variety. Mario Andretti won Indy and in Nascar, as well as driving Porsche 956s at Le Mans. Graham Hill, John Surtees and Jim Clark were notable exponents from the golden age. Like watching Prince rock seemingly any instrument handed to him, witnessing a truly great F1 driver turn their hand to another form of racing offers an exciting new angle for appreciation.
Sunday’s drive at the Nürburgring was a typically assured display from Verstappen and his ice-cold British team-mate, Chris Lulham, in an Emil Frey Racing Ferrari. Verstappen aggressively took the lead on the first lap, from third on the grid, and the pair then drove almost flawlessly for the next 424 miles. During a post-race interview, Nürburgring legend Frank Stippler was in awe, which tells you all you need to know.
More is to come, though. We should recognise that the bulk of the world’s gun GT3 drivers have been in Japan this weekend, racing at the Fuji 6 Hours for the World Endurance Championship.
A stiffer test of Verstappen’s mettle in the category will therefore have to wait until next year, and maybe we will even see him in the Nürburgring 24 Hours. That is possibly the maddest race in top-level motorsport, and the prospect of having a multiple F1 champ and motorsport renaissance man in the mix, trading paint and carbonfibre with sports car racing’s brightest talents, is truly tantalising.
