Verstappen makes shocking F1 competition claim

Max Verstappen has declared he often finds competition in sim racing to be more difficult than F1.

Verstappen is known to be an avid sim racer and spends some of his free time at home on his simulator, taking part in virtual races.

He enters the contests alongside his full-time role at Red Bull in F1, where he has take four consecutive titles.

Although the stakes are higher in real life, Verstappen admitted he finds competitors more difficult to beat in the virtual world.

“Everyone always thinks that it’s just a game and it’s fun, easy going,” Verstappen told The Athletic.

“But I would say the competition is just as hard, or even harder, to nail — to win — than in real life.”

Verstappen is closely associated with the Team Redline racing squad, a team he has remained loyal to rather than setting up his own sim racing team.

Explaining his long-term collaboration with the outfit, Verstappen said: “I’m a loyal person. 

“I really appreciate friendship a lot. I could have set up my own team under my own name. 

“I didn’t want to do that because we had such a good group of people at Team Redline that I was like, ‘I don’t want them to then come to me. I want everyone to stay in a structure.’”

“I said, you guys started it all, and I find it very important that everyone stays on and, you know, everyone is in their own role, but we keep this winning team – because they were when I joined. They were already incredibly successful.

“I said, ‘But if you really want to be successful for the long term, I need to be more involved, and when I’m going to invest in it, we go all the way’, and that’s basically what happened at one point.”