Whilst the Formula 1 crown still eludes Max Verstappen, the Dutchman has added another championship victory to his name by taking title honours in Redline’s Esports championship.
Team Redline’s Real Racers Never Quit series pits 35 professional racing drivers against one another on iRacing across 12 rounds.
Verstappen headed into the final rounds with a healthy points lead over nearest rival, Audi factory driver Kelvin van der Linde.
Taking place at Suzuka in LMP2 machinery saw Van der Linde dominate the event, taking two wins, both from pole position, to close Verstappen’s points lead, but it wasn’t enough as Verstappen would go on to finish sixth after a scrappy race which saw him drop down to ninth from the front-row.
The Dutchman rightly deserved to be crowned champion having won six of the previous ten races – a seventh win looked possible had his PC not crashed at the start of the Interlagos round, where he was due to start from pole.
“Race one, I could have possibly won the race, but it is what it is,” Verstappen said. “It was all about collecting the points, which I needed after my PC crash after Interlagos, otherwise it would have been won already. These cars are fun, it was my first day of driving them,” he said of the LMP2 cars, with machinery swapping at each round.
He went on to win the series by 60 points over Van der Linde, followed by fellow F1 driver Lando Norris in third.
