F1 News: Verstappen’s state-of-the-art F1 motorhome sim setup

(GMM) Max Verstappen got up to speed within “two laps” of his state-of-the-art simulator being installed in his new motorhome, which he will take to all European grands prix.

The triple world champion now famously combined his participation in the real-life Formula 1 race at Imola last weekend with some driving duties in the virtual 24-hour Nurburgring event on the iRacing sim platform.

“My motorhome was finished this year,” Verstappen, who won at Imola and was also part of the winning Redline team in the online 24-hour race, told Viaplay.

“So I put my simulator in there now. It’s actually the same as the simulator I have at home, so that’s no problem.”

The Redline crew actually went to great efforts to get Verstappen set up for Imola. “We had to build a simulator that fits in his motorhome,” confirmed Atze Kerkhof, the Team Redline founder.

“We put it together and he was up to speed within two laps.”

Kerkhof explained: “We were going to take it to him in a Formula 2 trailer with MP Motorsport, but it was just a bit too big. But they still helped us enormously by taking it to Imola with a guy who transports flowers who happened to be there on business.”

Redline engineer Jack Cubitt, meanwhile, “was there to set everything up and build it into his motorhome”, he added.

“But then we had a power outage,” said Kerkhof. “A certain driver had a short circuit in his coffee machine where the motorhomes were, so we were forced to arrange an APC battery.

“Jack looked all over Imola and even Milan to find one, but eventually he found that Max drives for a team that just has these things in stock, so in the end he just asked the (Red Bull) team.”

Verstappen, 26, admits that his next ambition is to take part in real-life endurance races – like the 24 hours of Le Mans.

“Hopefully it will be possible in five or six years,” said Verstappen. “If we’re going to have more and more (F1) races, it’s almost impossible to do that now.

“If I want to do it, I also want to prepare well and be competitive,” he added. “You have to test well and be well prepared with the right team, and you can’t actually do that during a Formula 1 season at the moment.”