Max Verstappen’s GT3 itch meets 2026 reality: ‘How many times can I do it next year? I don’t know’
Max Verstappen’s love affair with GT racing moved off the sim rig and onto the Nordschleife this year, and of course he made it look easy. Teaming up with Chris Lulham, the Red Bull star jumped into GT3 competition at the Nürburgring and promptly won on debut — the sort of crossover cameo that used to be a fixture in motorsport before calendars, commercial deals, and fitness programs turned everyone’s lives into spreadsheets.
He’s smitten with the discipline. That part’s obvious. But as the 2026 Formula 1 ruleset barrels into view, Verstappen’s keen sense of pragmatism is edging out the romantic in him. Asked how often he could squeeze GT3 outings into an already crammed 2025–26 schedule, his answer was a shrug you could hear: “How many times can I do it next year? I don’t know. We’ll see.”
This isn’t a dalliance for the sake of it. Verstappen’s Verstappen.com Racing project has been years in the making, forged in sim racing and now maturing in the real world, and he’s adamant that driving the cars himself is part of the brief. “It’s my passion,” he said. “If I drive it, I have the best feeling of things, and then it’s easier to judge what to do.” That’s not a superstar moonlighting; that’s a team owner collecting data the old-fashioned way.
His Nürburgring weekend showed exactly why the place gets under your skin. Verstappen described the lap like a kid who’d raided the biscuit tin and got away with it — the onboard that did the rounds featured a pass completed with two wheels on the grass in qualifying. “Wet grass, as well!” he laughed. “I’d had so much traffic in the lap, I needed to improve. So I was like, well, two wheels on the grass — and luckily it was not a big shunt!”
It’s the sort of risk/reward moment GT fans dine out on and F1 team managers secretly dread. But it also tells you why he keeps coming back to this world. For all the sophistication of an F1 car, the GT3 paddock delivers a different buzz: multi-class traffic, long stints, knife-edge grip, a track that can turn from helpful to spiteful in a corner and a half. Verstappen’s been playing in that space for years online; now he’s adding laps that count to his database.
And yet, reality bites. The 2026 F1 cars — with their overhauled aero, new power unit regs and the usual bucket of unknowns — will demand time, focus, and the kind of early groundwork Verstappen has always thrived on. Red Bull Racing’s job over the coming 18 months is clear, and Verstappen knows it. The GT3 fun will stay on a short leash until the next era of F1 settles down.
That’s not to say the door is closing. If anything, the Nordschleife outing felt like a pilot episode rather than a one-off. Verstappen admitted he’d love to do more, just not at the cost of what pays the bills and chisels the legacy. It’s an old-school motorsport balance updated for modern commitments: the urge to race everything with wheels, tempered by the knowledge that F1 in 2026 leaves very little room for hobbies.
The timing of his GT3 cameo — tucked in before Singapore, the last scheduled one on his 2025 slate — felt deliberate. Scratch the itch, learn, win, file it away. It also reinforced a broader truth about Verstappen: when he turns up, he turns up to win. Whether it’s a Grand Prix or a foray into endurance machinery, the same instincts apply. Get up to speed, eliminate the fluff, trust the feel, and push where others lift.
There’s a touch of Jim Clark nostalgia to all this, the throwback to an era when F1 stars jumped between disciplines as a matter of course. The comparison only goes so far — calendars and contracts aren’t what they used to be — but the impulse is similar. Race because you can. Race because it teaches you something. Race because it’s fun.
The fun, for now, is on pause. The focus isn’t. Verstappen’s GT3 story will add more chapters when his day job allows. Until then, the image of those two wheels on wet grass at the Nürburgring will do just fine — a reminder that even the most clinical operator in F1 still gets a kick out of the messy, brilliant edge of motor racing.
And when 2026 arrives? Don’t be surprised if the GT calendar starts filling up again once the new-era Red Bull is sorted. Verstappen’s made his intentions pretty clear: GT3 isn’t a distraction. It’s a plan. The timing just has to be right.
