It is known in endurance racing that you absolutely cannot win a race in the first corner, but you can sure as hell lose one, but apparently Max Verstappen never learned that lesson. During Sunday’s IMSA Esports Daytona Michelin 240, the fourth round of the digital racing championship, Verstappen chucked his Acura prototype down the inside of the championship-leading Williams ESports Chillblast polesitter, sidelining both cars at the first corner of the two-hour and 40-minute race. Apparently, Max drives like a dickhead online, too.
Four-time Formula One World Champion Max Verstappen is known for using aggressive driving tactics and late dives down the inside to push competitors off the track. He’s been doing it in F1 for damn near a decade, and when he’s not almost killing drivers in meatspace, he does it in the virtual world. E-racing is Verstappen’s main hobby outside the cockpit and has run afoul of his Red Bull Racing team in the past for spending too much time on real-world Grand Prix weekends running virtual endurance races in iRacing.
Max had qualified his team car in third place for the Michelin 240 and while the very talented Dutchman could likely have held back and worked his way through to the lead, he decided to fuckin’ send it instead and took himself and the polesitter out of contention from the drop of the green flag. Verstappen.com Racing would ultimately finish twelfth place, a minute behind the winner, and the BMW of Williams Esports Chillblast would come home a few places ahead in tenth of the 17 entered GTP class cars.
I’m not sure when the 27-year-old F1 champ is going to grow the fuck up, but 2025 doesn’t seem to be the year. Prepare for more of this kind of immature shit-ass driving to happen on the track in real life when the 2025 F1 season begins in Australia on March 16.
