Max Verstappen didn’t need a grand prix to find his rhythm last weekend. With Formula 1’s Saudi Arabian Grand Prix wiped off the calendar, the reigning world champion headed back to the Nürburgring and dropped straight into the particular sort of intensity only the Nordschleife can offer: a qualifying race where traffic is constant, margins are tiny, and reputations are made on how you behave when it gets elbows-out.
The headline from Sunday morning wasn’t a trophy, but it was telling all the same. Christopher Haase — a Nürburgring specialist and not a man known for handing out compliments lightly — came away from a proper scrap at the front describing Verstappen’s driving as “very respectful”. In a paddock that’s increasingly sensitive to the way drivers race each other, that’s the kind of praise that lands.
Verstappen was sharing the #3 Mercedes-AMG GT3 with Lucas Auer. Auer had put the car fifth in Top Qualifying, but it was Verstappen who took the opening stint and immediately looked like he’d been waiting all week for it. He made a place on the first lap to run fourth, then picked off another to get onto the tail of Haase’s Audi R8, which had inherited the lead after Dennis Marschall’s Ferrari was displaced.
From there it became the sort of duel that the Nürburgring does better than anywhere: two top-line GT3 cars, two drivers who know exactly what they’re doing, and a track that punishes even the slightest misjudgement. Verstappen sat on Haase’s rear wing, applying that familiar pressure — present in every mirror, never rushing the move — and then took the lead around the half-hour mark.
Haase stayed attached. Verstappen couldn’t break him on pure pace, and on a lap that long you often don’t. The decisive swing in that phase came in the pits. The Audi made a driver change at the first stop, while Verstappen’s Mercedes only took fuel, buying him clear air and, with it, breathing space. At one point the gap was out beyond 30 seconds, which looked like a statement.
The Nordschleife, of course, has a way of replying.
Later, Verstappen did come in for a driver swap — and the Mercedes didn’t just pause, it effectively stopped. A broken splitter required repairs, and the car sat in the garage for 28 minutes. When Auer finally rejoined, the game was no longer about fighting at the front; it was survival and salvage, threading back through the slower classes to reach the flag 39th overall.
Up front, Haase — alongside Ben Green and Alexander Sims — converted the opportunity into victory.
For Haase, the substance of the day wasn’t simply “we won”. It was the quality of the combat before Verstappen’s race unravelled. “It was just grandiose again, our duel out there,” he said, acknowledging it felt “a bit trickier” this time with an Audi that wasn’t fully to his liking on the rear axle. Yet when he got to Verstappen, the tone shifted from analysis to admiration.
“He was great again and drove very respectfully,” Haase said. “Really handsome… Max just positioned himself perfectly each time.” And the line that probably mattered most: Haase felt he was “never in a position to take that little bit of momentum” — not because Verstappen was chopping him up, but because he was always placed exactly where a rival needs to be, one step ahead in the sequence.
There’s an interesting nuance there. “Respectful” in GT racing isn’t code for “backed out”. It means you can go wheel-to-wheel in traffic, over kerbs, through long, blind commitments, and still trust the guy next to you to leave a lane when it’s needed. At the Nürburgring, that trust is currency.
Verstappen, for his part, sounded far more interested in the feel of the stint than the result sheet. “I did have fun today,” he said. “The car felt good, which I’m happy about. I was able to complete my stints, even in traffic, which was quite intense.”
That’s the other takeaway: this wasn’t a vanity appearance. He talked about battling other GT3 cars, about the usefulness of running in traffic, and framed it as what it plainly is — preparation for the main event. “In that respect it was good preparation for the 24-hour race. I’m as ready for it as I can be.”
He did flag the one obvious missing piece: night running. “The only thing is that I haven’t driven in the dark yet,” Verstappen admitted. “I don’t think you can do any more than that.”
The Nürburgring 24 Hours follows on 16–17 May, and Verstappen has been clear since the start of the year that he intends to take part. After this weekend, the storyline isn’t that he got beaten — mechanical damage will do that to anyone here. It’s that, in the short window before it went wrong, he went head-to-head with one of the track’s best and came away with the sort of respect you don’t get for lap time alone.
