Max Verstappen left offended by fellow drivers as F1 star's record questioned

Daily Mirror

18-05-2025

The lap record at the famous Nurburgring Nordschleife was unofficially broken by Max Verstappen last week but the Red Bull F1 racer's achievement was called into question on social media
Max Verstappen fumed after the veracity of his exploits at the Nurburgring on his week off were called into question. The Dutchman raised eyebrows before the Emilia Romagna Grand Prix by heading to Germany for some GT testing at the famous circuit.
Verstappen went undercover to drive at the Nurburgring, adopting the pseudonym 'Franz Hermann' for the sake of the test. He drove a Ferrari 296 GT3 and, it soon emerged, set a new lap record for that type of racing machine – though that claim was soon called into question.
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Some experienced GT racers also got involved in what turned out to be quite the argument on social media. And that included Maro Engel, who races in the German DTM series and claimed that Verstappen had not been running with a proper Nurburgring Endurance Series set-up on the car.
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The implication was that Verstappen had been able to go faster because of a set-up which made the car more performant than it would be in an proper race in that series. But Verstappen was quick to snap back at that claim.
"False. Don't spread things when you don't know how the car was set up and our engine settings. Why would I join a NLS track day with the wrong BOP?" he wrote on X. And Engel responded: "Seems like paddock chat was incorrect then."
He could have just ignored all the noise, but it seems to have annoyed the Red Bull driver. Regarding Engel's social media accusation, he told journalists at Imola: "That was a stupid comment. I went there to have fun and just drive my laps. I [was] just there to learn.
"Then the record comes out of course, and it's as if other drivers feel attacked. I'm just enjoying myself, and then you get that kind of unnecessary comment, which I find totally pointless.
"I know him [Engel]. So yeah, then I think, 'It's probably better not to say anything'. But I happened to come across it in my feed. Normally you don't see that, but I've met him a few times in Monaco. I have a lot of respect for everyone in the GT3 world, and then I think, 'This is just unnecessary'."
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And he insisted that he had indeed been using the correct set-up on the car. "Of course. Otherwise it would be a bit silly to drive there," he said.
Verstappen went on to confirm that he had gone quicker than the official Nurburgring Endurance Series lap record at the famous circuit of seven minutes and 49.578 seconds, set in 2022 by Christian Krognes. But, because it was a test, that record still stands as the four-time F1 champion's laps were unofficial.
Verstappen had never driver on the Nordschleife in person before that test, but it was not an unfamiliar track for the Dutchman regardless. "I've done thousands of laps there [in the simulator]," he said. "When I got there in real life, it was really just a matter of finding out the grip level. I already knew everything else."