- Verstappen completed passing all 100 rivals on lap 14.
- He finished the run in 35 minutes flat.
- His fastest lap was two minutes 20.673 seconds.
Max Verstappen started 101st on a grid of 101 karts at Silverstone. Fourteen laps later, he’d passed all 100 of them.
Max Verstappen started dead last in a field of 101 karts at Silverstone and finished the job in 35 minutes flat. The Formula 1 champion’s run through Red Bull’s Max vs 100, staged as the largest go-kart race ever held, ended on lap 14 of 30 once the final rival, pole-sitter Jacky Martens, was passed.
The grid ahead of Verstappen was filled with Red Bull athletes, content creators, streamers, journalists and fans from around the world, most of whom had only driven the temporary Silverstone layout twice before race day. The opening minutes alone eliminated 63 drivers, more than half the field, before Verstappen had even completed a full lap.
Gallery: Max Verstappen Vs 100 Kart Racers in Silverstone
How The Chaos Unfolded
The first lap set the tone. Verstappen passed more than 10 drivers before reaching the start/finish line, and the field folded on itself at the hairpin as karts collided and spun the wrong way. “I have no idea what’s going on. It’s carnage,” he said over the radio, two minutes into a race where he was already up to 37th.
Under the event’s rules, a pass was final the instant Verstappen’s rear wheels drew level with a rival’s front, so every overtake ended a driver’s race outright. On lap 7, YouTuber Paky TWC, running sixth at the time, asked Verstappen over the radio not to pass him. He was overtaken shortly after.
By the midpoint, three drivers, Martens, YouTuber Zac Alsop, and Red Bull Ford Powertrains technician Lewis Osler, had built a 12-second lead while chaos swallowed the rest of the grid behind them. Verstappen was cutting three seconds a lap from that gap. With 54 minutes still on the clock, the race director awarded the leading trio an extra fast lap, which they used together on lap 12 before switching to defense.
It bought them little. Verstappen caught the group a lap later, cleared Alsop and Osler in a single corner, then passed Martens to seal the win with 35 minutes still remaining. His fastest lap, 2 minutes 20.673 seconds, was more than two and a half seconds quicker than Martens’s best.
The People Behind The Numbers
Martens, Osler, and fourth-placed Alsop joined the podium alongside Verstappen, putting two everyday competitors alongside a four-time world champion. Off-road motorcyclist Pol Tarrés finished fifth, ahead of livestreamer RDJavi, photographer Larry Chen, mountain biker Bernard Kerr, and actor Neo Yau in the top 10.
“When I went to the grid and I saw where I had to start, with 100 karts in front of me, I was a little bit worried,” Verstappen said. “After my first lap, with all the carnage, I did think ‘Okay, we have got this under control!'”
Race director and track designer David Terrien, who built the circuit specifically for a 100-kart field, credited Verstappen’s instincts for the margin. “He sees a gap that’s going to open and it’s not open yet,” Terrien said. “So I think that’s a race vision, that’s something he has that most of the drivers don’t have.”
Oracle Red Bull Racing had modeled the race in advance and expected it to take roughly 40 minutes, according to partnerships group lead Jack Harington, one of the 100 entrants. “Sometimes you’ve got a Max Verstappen who’s just going to beat the data,” Harington said. The event streamed live on Disney+ and the ESPN App, hosted by comedian Mo Gilligan, and remains available on both platforms, with a broadcast set for ESPN2 at 7:00 p.m. ET.
Motor1’s Take: Verstappen’s charge did more than create a viral clip. It turned a stunt grid of fans and content creators into a live demo of just how far the best pros sit from even quick amateurs.
The format made that gap easy to see. Same karts, one layout, no strategy calls, yet one driver carved through traffic at a pace the models did not predict. It is a reminder of how much of modern Formula 1 still rests on the person in the seat.
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Source:
Red Bull
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