What Verstappen's incredible Nurburgring GT3 win proved

Max Verstappen following up his game-changing back-to-back F1 Grand Prix wins by winning a GT race on the epic Nürburgring Nordschleife was not just a brilliant and slightly surreal achievement but it also told us a huge amount about Max as a driver and about what he might do next. Two weeks after going through the slightly complicated process to get his permit to race in the top class of the Nürburgring's NLS Endurance Series, the reigning F1 champion was let loose in a top-spec GT3 Ferrari 296 in the colours of his Verstappen.com team for his first proper real-life sports car race and he dominated it. From third on the grid Verstappen sliced between the front row starters to take the lead into the first corner and never looked back. Traffic, pit strategies and the code 60 slow zones used to tackle incidents around the extraordinary 25km track through the forest can make absolutely accurate pace comparisons hard in Nordschleife races, but not in this case. After a couple of laps to find his feet, Verstappen stormed away and by the time he handed the Emile Frey Racing Run car over to his teammate Chris Lulham for the second half of the race, Max was over a minute clear of the field. His fastest race lap was 4.5 seconds quicker than anyone else managed and 8 seconds clear of the best lap by the eventual second place finisher. As usual in endurance racing, some will point to this being a good balance of performance scenario for the Ferrari 296 that Max used. There were also big teams and factory drivers missing from the entry because of the clash with the Fuji World Endurance Championship round, so the field wasn't as deep as turns up for the 24-hour race at the track each year, which is Verstappen's ultimate goal here. But the grid was still packed with GT and Nordschleife specialists. For example, take Frank Stippler, the man Max was leaving behind in second place during his stints. Stippler may be 23 years older than Verstappen, but he has been racing GT cars at the Nordschleife for literally almost longer than Max has been alive, and is a three-time Nürburgring 24 Hours winner. But at the end of the race, Stippler could only applaud what he called the best driver in the world, and said Verstappen's performance was no surprise given he's from the simulator generation, so came very prepared. So whatever the caveats, Verstappen's GT3 debut win was a hugely impressive performance, and one that Verstappen clearly absolutely loved. The likelihood is that Verstappen will not be Formula One World Champion this year, and yet 2025 will elevate his standing even further as the benchmark for modern drivers as well as a unique all-time great. One or two lapses in judgement aside, Verstappen has once again performed at the top end of his ability this season. He is the best driver on the grid on the most consistent basis, and this season should further that claim as much as any of his title winning years. He's not been perfect, but has been typically great. And in the same year, he has become a Nordschleife winner. There has been justified attention on his bid to get a permit to race at the famous track, a favourite of his from sim racing, and then actually compete there properly and win at his first attempt. Okay, it wasn't 24 Hours around the Nordschleife, and there were some top drivers missing, but it was the Nordschleife, so it was a bigger deal than, say, Lando Norris turning up for a British GT round at Silverstone, especially as it comes with the promise of so much more in Verstappen's era-transcending career. On the one hand, Verstappen is the ideal modern Grand Prix driver, a product of a stellar karting background imbued with the round the clock enthusiasm for driving that means he also has a fierce dedication to sim racing. On the other hand, he is a throwback. F1 driver is his job, but he is not pigeonholed as a single-seater specialist. He is a committed, passionate racer who wants to drive to satisfy his own interest in driving. The upshot is the best F1 driver in the world is taking Bussmann's holidays to the Nordschleife and racing on arguably the world's most famous, fearsome racetrack. The unique, impressive reality of that really shouldn't be underestimated. Verstappen's drive and enthusiasm for racing is extreme even among his peers, rivalling that of Fernando Alonso. The two drivers share an undying love of driving and a strong mutual respect. Ask either who is best in F1, besides themselves, and they would probably say the other. What's different about Verstappen though is he has no reason to be doing this other than enjoying it, and there is a clear contrast here to what Alonso did during his extracurricular activities. Alonso entering the Indy 500 in the middle of an F1 season, and Le Mans 24 hours the next, was part of a very serious bid for the triple crown. It would be wrong to put Verstappen doing more German Endurance Series races on the same level as that, but at least part of what Alonso did must be put down to a desire for personal glory. F1 wasn't working out for him at the time, he could see his tally of world titles being forever stuck on two as certain peers racked up more and more, and he wanted to prove he was the best in the world in another way. Verstappen might end up doing the same thing, but it could almost happen by accident, a case of winning something just because he wanted to race something. There's a strong likelihood Verstappen is heading towards having an immense F1 record and then a post F1 career as a brilliant all-rounder. By any measure, even Alonso's, he would have a strong claim as the best of his generation and maybe the best driver of all time. Verstappen has been very open about these NLS races being the precursor to a bid to win the Nürburgring 24 hours itself. That falls neatly in a gap in the 2026 F1 calendar between the Miami and Canadian Grand Prix next May, although for now at least, Max is being slightly coy on he'll do the 24 hours as early as next year, pointing out he needs to see how his 2026 F1 campaign is going first. With the massive rule changes and Red Bull switching to its own in-house engine programme in partnership with Ford, you can see why Verstappen might want his bosses to be sure he's not getting distracted by extracurricular racing. But you also already get the sense that it's a case of a 2026 Nürburgring 24 hours bid being very much plan A for Verstappen, and he'd be disappointed to have to postpone it. He's hinted at a few more NLS appearances to prepare for it too. The 24 hours will be on another level compared to what Verstappen's experienced in the NLS. The major GT racing manufacturers take it extremely seriously. He'll be up against factory drivers and teams from the likes of BMW, Audi, Porsche, Mercedes and more. Unlike Alonso's wide-ranging motorsport glory quest, Verstappen is specifically interested in endurance racing. When asked if he fancied copying Alonso's triple crown bid, he dismissed IndyCar and Indy 500 as something he enjoyed watching but was not keen to race in, but he did highlight Le Mans 24 hours as a goal. He calls endurance racing his hobby and does plenty of it online, even sometimes in the middle of F1 weekends. The Verstappen team he lends his name to in GT racing isn't one of those cases of an F1 champion putting their brand on a team elsewhere in motorsport then having absolutely nothing to do with it. He takes a keen interest in how it's going and how its drivers are progressing. His NLS teammate, Lullum, is typical of the kind of sim-racer turned real-life racing talent who Verstappen wants to give opportunities to and develop using his project. Lullum drives a Verstappen car in GT World Challenge Europe alongside Thierry Vermeulen, a friend of Verstappen and not coincidentally the son of his manager Raymond. Lullum and Vermeulen have already given Verstappen a World Challenge podium at Brands Hatch earlier this year. Verstappen's urge young drivers to keep their eyes open to the sort of career endurance racing can offer and not just turn to it only when their F1 dream is over. There have been times over the last few years when Verstappen, even in the middle of title-winning campaigns, has seemed jaded with F1, although always with background elements such as the length of the calendar, media demands, the feeling of being gagged by the authorities or perhaps the internal tensions at Red Bull that have ended with Christian Horner's exit. He dropped some hints he might quit F1 when relatively young and go off to enjoy himself more in endurance instead. This now feels more like something he'll carry on doing in parallel with F1, though he admits it's a bit tricky to fit into an F1 season. Take next year's calendar, yes, a Nürburgring 24 hours is possible, but the Spa 24 hours, which is part of the GT World Challenge series his team races in, clashes with F1's Austrian Grand Prix, and a fortnight before that he'll be busy racing in the Spanish Grand Prix when the Le Mans 24 hours is on. Beyond 2026 we suspect Max is going to be watching the F1 and WEC calendar announcements very closely, because there's a very obvious door about to open to give him a shot at contesting the Le Mans 24 hours top class in a complementary programme alongside his F1 career, if the calendars align, as they did when Verstappen's friend Nico Hülkenberg managed to fit winning Le Mans with Porsche around his 2015 F1 season with Force India. We mentioned that Red Bull's about to tie with Ford in F1. Ford is also about to enter the headline hypercar class of the World Endurance Championship in 2027, and one of its technical partners in that project is Red Bull Powertrains. The Ford hypercar programme manager is Dan Sayers, who has moved into that role from being programme director at Red Bull Powertrains. Ford is running its hypercar programme mostly in-house, but with support from organisations including RBPT, and its base near Oxford in the UK is not far from Red Bull's Milton Keynes base. Assuming Verstappen does stay at Red Bull deep into its Ford era, and things go well enough that he has spare time to have a punt at Le Mans too, the Red Bull-Ford relationship is a very logical way to make it all happen. Whether it'll be a Le Mans winning car though is much harder to say. The WEC field is stacked right now, Ford's going up against Ferrari, Alpine, Aston Martin, BMW, Cadillac, Peugeot, Porsche and Toyota, with Hyundai brand Genesis and McLaren on the way too. Ford's on a tight schedule, with its hypercar not scheduled for shakedown tests until next summer, and the decision to run the programme in-house, albeit with high-profile helpers, has raised some eyebrows in the sports car world. Ferrari's ultra-successful return to Le Mans top class is a collaboration with its long-time sports car racing partner AF Corsa. Porsche works with Penske, and McLaren's using Zach Brown's other team, United Autosports, for its new hypercar effort. So while the idea of Verstappen lining up on the 2027 or 2028 Le Mans 24 Hours grid in a Red Bull-liveried Ford hypercar is pretty easy to imagine, it's still going to be a massive step from there to Max actually being a Le Mans winner. But on the evidence of his exploits over the last fortnight on the Nordschleife, Verstappen himself will be a very handy not-so-secret weapon for any endurance racing team.