Verstappen finally joins forces with Aston Martin

Max Verstappen has run his own racing programme for a number of years, called Verstappen.com Racing. This season, for the first time, the team will partner with Aston Martin.

Competing in the GT World Challenge Endurance championship, the Dutchman will field a line up of Harry King, Thierry Vermeulen and Chris Lulham, in which the trio will race an Aston Martin Vantage GT3.

The lattermost driver has come up through sim racing and Verstappen's Team Redline. It is the first time he has swapped the virtual world for a real life race track.

"It has always been my dream to support young drivers and for some time now I have been trying to create the opportunity for a sim driver to make the step to real racing," Verstappen explained in a press release.

"With Chris Lulham, who is now promoted from Team Redline sim racing to our GT3 Sprint and Endurance Racing, and will be a teammate of Thierry Vermeulen, who has been driving for Verstappen.com Racing for a couple of years, we are taking on that new challenge."

Lulham will also compete for Emil Frey Racing, driving a Ferrari in the GT World Challenge Europe Sprint Cup alongside Vermeulen, who will also be a part of that team's DTM programme - for a third year in a row.

"We are going to race all together and work with professional teams that support us in challenging championships. Of course there is still a lot to learn to maximise our performance of the cars and drivers," Verstappen continued.

"The goal is to be competitive and compete at the top of the field. It is great that we are now making it possible for a sim racer to compete against established drivers. We have an exciting year ahead of us!"