Max Verstappen’s idea of a track walk? Don’t walk.
While most of the grid can be spotted shuffling around a circuit on Thursdays with engineers, iPads and the occasional scooter, Verstappen is happy to leave the laps to the car and the homework to his phone. Speaking alongside Chris Harris in a Ford video, the Red Bull star laid out a routine that’s very Max: keep it simple, keep it focused, and keep it moving.
“If I come to a new track, the first thing I do is look at onboards—whatever I can find,” he said. “I also like to look at Google Maps sometimes. So you just have it in your head.” Visualisation, then validation. The rest happens at speed. “My out-lap is my track walk,” he added. “You drive a bit slower, look around, and you’re like, ‘Okay, that’s fine.’”
The disdain for the traditional stroll is blunt and very on-brand. “Honestly, to walk for five to seven kilometres, it’s just boring,” Verstappen shrugged. He’ll consider it only when a venue is genuinely unfamiliar. Otherwise, why spend an hour picking over kerbs and cambers when you’ll feel everything properly through the wheel by Turn 3?
Purists will argue a track walk helps spot the tiny details—new patches of tarmac, altered drainage, a painted line that’s been moved half a metre. Engineers love that stuff because it reduces unknowns. Verstappen’s counter is that modern prep tools, onboards and a disciplined out-lap do the same job without the plodding. And when your first flyer is often good enough to set the tone for qualifying, it’s hard to argue the man doesn’t know what he needs.
There’s also an undercurrent here about how elite drivers process information. Verstappen talks about “having it in your head,” and you can see why. The best are building a lap long before FP1—reference points, minimum speeds, rotation timing. Some need to walk it to stitch that map together. Verstappen doesn’t. He’ll download the data, picture the lap, then trust his feel to do the rest.
It won’t convert the paddock’s walkers, and nor is it meant to. F1 has room for both the detail-obsessed wanderers and the seat-of-the-pants instinct guys. Verstappen just happens to be one of the latter—with Google Maps as his unlikely co-driver.
