Verstappen expands on plans for own racing team

Max Verstappen has expanded on his plans to form his own racing team in the future.

The Dutchman recently announced his own racing project and is aiming to enter it into GT3-class competition from 2025.

Verstappen's primary focus is currently on Formula 1, with the 26-year-old enjoying a highly dominant campaign this year by winning 19 out of the 22 races en route to a third World Championship.

While he is looking to expand his own racing project, Verstappen confirmed that it is still only in the early stages.

“Right now, it’s early phases,” he said in an interview for Verstappen.com.

“Using Verstappen.com Racing, we sponsor and support the racing activities of various people close to me via consultations and advice. It all started with the sim racing of Team Redline.

“Many people still think that sim racing is not professional, but it’s a serious sport, and I invest a lot of hours into it, to prepare and defeat everybody else.

“We’re also busy right now at Verstappen.com Racing with Thierry Vermeulen in DTM and GTWC Sprint, and with my father in the rally races, but the goal is to eventually start our own race team. We’ll begin in the GT3-class, and see which way the wind blows.”

Making the step from sim racing

Verstappen added that “it would be wonderful if we could continue growing to the highest level of endurance racing” in the future.

This could include the 24 Hours of Le Mans, with Verstappen admitting it “would be cool” to enter the race in a car from his own team.

As part of the project, Verstappen is hoping to promote sim racers into real-life competition as he highlighted the expense of racing in karting to begin the motorsport ladder climb.

“If I do something, I want to do it right. I always want to win: at this as well,” he said.

“The focus is on making the step from sim racing to GT3, so that not only you can enter racing via karting, because that’s ridiculously expensive at the moment.

“Sim racing, in comparison, is a lot cheaper. Such a switch is possible. It’s happened before, of course, but never really well, for a number of reasons.

“If you do everything professionally, I believe you can build a great racing career out of sim racing.”