Horner: Verstappen is a “racing machine” after his two wins at the weekend
Red Bull boss Christian Horner called Max Verstappen a "racing machine" after the Dutchman won the Formula 1 Grand Prix at Imola and the Nürburgring 24 Hours sim racing race on the same day.

Max Verstappen’s busy schedule at Imola did not prevent him from taking part in the Nurburgring 24-hour iRacing enduro with his Team Redline simulation team. After securing pole position in Italy on Saturday, he did a three-hour stint on his simulator in the evening and added two additional hours on Sunday morning to help his team win the event.
The director of the Austrian team, Christian Horner, said he had no objection to Verstappen taking his sim racing as seriously during a Grand Prix weekend. “He is essentially a racing machine, so he often tests different settings in the evenings and things like that, so it is not unusual for him to do that,” he said.
He won two races today. One in a BMW M3 and one in a Formula 1 single-seater. You heard what that meant to him. For yesterday’s pole position, he really had to dig deep, and today’s performance was a masterclass.
Verstappen was put under intense pressure from Lando Norris in the final laps of the race, with the Dutch driver struggling to keep his hard tires up to temperature. In the first stint on mediums, it seemed like we had everything under control,” assessed Horner.
A last-minute victory for Red Bull
After switching to the hard tires, the first half of the relay was absolutely fine but we started losing temperature in the tire and with that, performance. The other thing that made this particularly stressful at the end of the race was that Max had already received three warnings for track limits, so Max could not afford to make a single mistake. He delivered brilliantly, so despite significant pressure, he was able to manage this and keep Lando just outside of the DRS.
His teammate, Sergio Perez, was unable to reproduce Verstappen’s strong performance, going from a disappointing 11th place on the grid to eighth place. But Verstappen made an impressive comeback for Red Bull after struggling during Friday’s practices, which Horner described as a big dive to understand why the car’s balance was so unbalanced. “We did a lot of setup work on Friday night and into Saturday and managed to shift the balance and put the car in a much better window,” he explained.
« It was a big dive. This is where you must never underestimate the support that comes from the broader team at the factory, simulator pilots, and where credit is due, the essence of the team is to be able to respond when things are not going well, and we managed to turn the situation around. As a result, by Friday, all our analyses would not have indicated a way out. But we managed to turn the situation around and win the race.