Jos Verstappen walked away from a heavy accident at the Rallye de Wallonie on Sunday morning after his Skoda Fabia RS Rally2 left the road and hit a tree on the Loyers stage.
The incident brought an abrupt end to Verstappen’s weekend in the fourth round of the 2026 Belgian Rally Championship, with the car reportedly caught out through a fast left-right sequence. The impact came on the left side before the Fabia rolled, and photos circulating from the scene showed substantial damage.
Crucially, Verstappen and co-driver Jasper Vermeulen are understood to be uninjured.
Verstappen’s crash came with a bit of added context around the cockpit. He’s running with Vermeulen on a temporary basis this weekend after his usual co-driver, Renaud Jamoul, was sidelined with a broken ankle. Even in rallying terms, that’s not a trivial switch: chemistry matters, pace-note cadence matters, and so does language.
Verstappen admitted before the accident that Vermeulen — more commonly paired with Cedric Cherain — was effectively translating his working habits on the fly, including calling notes in English for the first time rather than the “usual system” Verstappen prefers.
“It was Jasper’s first time using notes in English since we normally stick to our usual system,” Verstappen said earlier in the event. “But everything went smoothly and the car felt great.”
That’s what will sting: by the time the car was back on the trailer, the weekend had already taken a few turns. Verstappen and Vermeulen were hit with a 40-second penalty for speeding in a liaison section, a costly early mistake that dumped them to 17th. But they’d done the hard part after that, hauling themselves back into the fight and up to third before Sunday’s off.
At the time of the crash, Verstappen was pushing to reel in the leading duo of Adrian Fernémont and Maxime Potty, who were running first and second respectively. Instead, it was a reminder of rallying’s simplest truth: you can look comfortable one minute and be out the next, with very little margin in between.
Verstappen, of course, is no hobbyist dabbling with a famous surname. He’s the reigning Belgian Rally Champion, having sealed the 2025 title last September — his first championship success since winning the LMP2 class of the Le Mans Series back in 2008.
And while most F1 fans will always see him through the lens of being Max Verstappen’s father, his post-F1 competitive life has been anything but quiet. Sunday’s crash, thankfully, ends as a story about a close call rather than anything worse. The car can be replaced; the outcome could’ve been far more serious.
