Max Verstappen Wins Final Race Of Online Racing Series

Saturday, 10 February 2024 at 06:00

There are still three weeks to go before the new F1 season begins, but Max Verstappen never stopped winning.

After winning 19 races during the 2023 season, the Dutch driver doesn't have many more records left when it comes to a single-season performance. However, Verstappen isn't one of the drivers that would completely "turn off" during the off-season.

The three-time World Champion took part in an online racing series with a very appropriate name, Real Racers Never Quit. The 26-year-old didn't quit during the off-season, and he even won the final race.

Previously, Verstappen won two of the first five races held over the past few weeks, and with the final race of the championship, he certainly wanted to prove that he was the best even outside of a Formula One car.

The last race was held at the Fuji Speedway in the GT3 class, and it was a dominant performance from the Dutchman from start to finish. He won the training, and also the qualifying with a time of 1:34.762, securing pole position ahead of Gustavo Ariel and Gianni Vecchio in the race.

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But for Verstappen it wasn't only about racing and winning, but also about making the race interesting. Early in the race, Gustavo Ariel had an incident when he ran over one of the kerbs and his car was catapulted into the air, resulting in a big two-second gap between the second Gianni Vecchio and the third William Chadwick.

However, the Dutch driver has decided to purposefully drop his pace to let the British driver catch up and make the race for the win a three-way fight, rather than a battle between two drivers.

"During the race, I quickly realized that Gianni [Vecchio] had a good pace. After Gustavo’s [Ariel] incident, I saw that the battle for the lead could get very exciting. I decided to lower the pace a little, so it would be a three-man fight for the lead, which would make it more interesting."

With only a few minutes left on the clock of a 30-minute race, Vecchio tried to make a move around the outside on the race leader, but he didn't succeed, and Chadwick passed him as a result.

Eventually, Verstappen won the race with a 0.438-second lead over second Chadwick and 2.131-second advantage over third Vecchio.

"Gianni was pretty heated, which allowed me to wait for the moment when he tried to overtake from the outside. This is technically impossible, so he lost that spot. I still had to push a lot, and it’s a lot of fun to race like that."