That he was brilliantly fast in a discipline so far removed from F1 really wasn’t so surprising. He’s Max Verstappen, after all. But the way in which he attacked the race right from the off made this something special. Footage of him climbing up from 10th to the lead on the damp surface, then pulling away, came replete with body contact and even a jaw-dropping passing move on Jesse Krohn completed partly on the grass.
The in-car night-time Verstappen footage as he battled with Marco Engel and they came to lap a lower class car in exactly the wrong place, headlights flashing as they descended upon it, trying to second-guess where it was going to be, with the nose of Engel’s Mercedes suddenly in the peripheral vision trying to take advantage, was raw, high-octane stuff. Kind of terrifying, but the core essence of the sport’s appeal.
It was a shame such a performance went unrewarded – Verstappen and his co-drivers Dani Juncadella, Lucas Auer and Jules Gounon were half a minute in the lead when forced to retire with a driveshaft problem three hours from the end. But that hardly mattered in the big picture. When that setting was combined with Verstappen’s audacity, it showcased something very special.
Verstappen’s night-time stint was spectacular
It begs two distinct questions. Could F1 ever produce something comparably thrilling? Secondly, was this purely a Verstappen virtuoso performance or just a reflection of the level of the best F1 drivers compared even to the extremely high driver standards in as serious a professional competitive category as GT3?
On the thrill question, it’s an unfair comparison. The venue has so much to do with it and F1 cars could not responsibly be let loose to race there. These are cars which lap Silverstone around half a minute faster than a GT3 (implying almost three minutes faster around the Nordschleife). The cornering and straightline speeds could not safely be combined with the run-off and, in some cases, even the sight lines of the Nordschleife.
