Max Verstappen’s latest dig at Formula 1‘s new cars saw him joke that Mario Kart is better practice for a race than a real-life simulator. Though the Dutchman also eased fears over his F1 future on Thursday by confirming: “I don’t want to leave.”
That is the worry for F1 chiefs, given Verstappen has probably been the driver most vocal in his criticism in these early weeks of the sport’s new era. The Dutchman has previously said that he intends to retire from F1 earlier than most others and declared on the eve of the season that the new regulations “aren’t helping to extend my career”.
But buoyed after confirming this week that he will race outside of F1 at the Nurburgring 24 Hours in May, the Red Bull racer said ahead of this weekend’s Sprint weekend in Shanghai: “I don’t want to leave, really. I wish I had a bit more fun, for sure, but I’m also doing other stuff that is a lot of fun. I get to race the Nordschleife.
“I hope, in the coming years, I can do Spa, and hopefully Le Mans, you know. I’m combining stuff to find other stuff that I find really fun as well. So I have a lot of distractions at the same time – positive distractions, I would call it – but at the same time it’s a bit conflicting because I don’t really enjoy driving the car, but I do enjoy working with all the people in the team and from the engine department as well.
“So no, I don’t want to leave. But I also hope that it gets better. I’ve had discussions with F1 and the FIA, and I think we are working towards something, and hopefully that will improve everything. I hope already for next year we can make a decent improvement. There are a few options that we are discussing.”
For now, though, Verstappen will have to make do with a car that gave him no joy even when cutting through the field from 18th on the grid to finish sixth in Melbourne last Sunday. It was a chaotic race all around with drivers struggling to manage battery levels and some drivers comparing how it is to control these new cars to a video game.
Verstappen extended that analogy as he joked about his preparations for the Chinese GP. He smirked: “I found a cheaper solution. I swapped the simulator for my Nintendo Switch and, yeah, practicing a bit of Mario Kart, actually.
“Yeah, finding the mushrooms is going quite well. The blue shell is a bit more difficult, but I’m working on it. The rockets are still not there. The rocket is coming!”