Formula One driver Max Verstappen has been on a roll in 2023, earning his sixth straight victory at the British Grand Prix. But he didn’t fare as well in the iRacing Golden Toast sim racing grand prix. The pilot took a shortcut to ram into another driver’s car after an accident.
Spotted by The Drive, a 52-second video posted on Twitter shows footage of a digital grand prix taking place on a surprisingly realistic replica of the Spa-Francorchamps track in Belgium. Verstappen loses several spots a little over one hour into the three-hour race after crashing into teammate Diogo Pinto and spinning out. The footage seemingly shows German driver Sven-Ole Hasse caused the crash.
Verstappen and Pinto re-enter the race in eighth and 10th place, respectively, and keep going. About 30 seconds later, Verstappen steers his Porsche 911 off the track and into an emergency lane. This shortcut quickly lands him in third place and puts him directly behind Hasse.
“Max Verstappen I think is making a statement — it’s gonna be ugly, that’s for sure,” one of the commentators predicts.
Max was in a sim racing competition today ( we had no clue about this but anyways) he got disqualified because shunted his opponent on purpose as a retaliation of the person hitting on him. Here’s the video:
Max 😭😭😭 pic.twitter.com/juEfKtpcmk
— Ana 🦁 (@maxvcalloway)
July 15, 2023
It didn’t take long for the Dutch driver to prove the commentator right. As the cars slow down to take a turn, Verstappen keeps going and rear-ends Hasse’s car, sending the German pilot spinning off the track and into a tire wall. Verstappen spun out and crashed as well. Luckily, none of this is real, so there were no injuries to report and no damage to any of the cars involved. Still, revenge isn’t part of the rules.
Verstappen was disqualified from the event, and he hasn’t commented on the incident. His fan base seems split: Some argue that ramming into Hasse was inappropriate (one Twitter user wrote “what a baby”) while others approved (“what a legend” appeared several times).