Max Verstappen and his crazy week: three cars and three classics with history
The Dutchman arrived in Suzuka for the third round of F1 with his Red Bull, but he arrives with his wrists very warm after six days of pure activity.
If he could, Max Verstappen would get into a racing car every day. And as a sample on a button: the last week. When this Friday the Dutchman gets into the Red Bull RB22 to begin the activity of the Japanese GP, the third date of the shortened 2026 Formula 1 year, the four-time champion will spin with the third car on three different tracks in the last six days. The journey of the Dutch It included, as if that were not enough, mythical settings full of great history.
It all started on Saturday the 21st on none other than the Nordschleife, the Nürburgring long circuit, baptized by Jackie Stewart as the Green Hell. On that track, Juan Manuel Fangio would achieve his last victory and fifth title in Formula 1 in 1957, in a German GP that was written in indelible ink among the most spectacular chapters in the history of the World Championship and immortalized in the Chueco statue on the track. Niki Lauda’s terrifying accident in 1976 was also experienced there, the last time the top flight used the Nordschleife. Last Saturday, Verstappen raced there on the second round of the NLS (Nürburgring Langstrecken-Serie).
Max has an old desire: to run the 24 Hours of the Nürburgring and, for that, in addition to having to take the Green Hell exam to have the qualifying license, it is also good to add kilometers in competitions. And last Saturday he won with a Mercedes-AMG GT3 that he shared with Dani Juncadella and Jules Gounon in the four-hour race, although he was later excluded because the team (which has official support from the star brand) used one more set of tires than allowed throughout the entire day (includes qualifying and competition). But who can take away the dancing from Max, who turned on that almost 23-kilometer route with the Mercedes V8, 6.3 liters and 550 horsepower.
But Max went for more. On Wednesday the 25th, four days after racing with the Mercedes, the Red Bull driver took a ride around Mount Fuji, Japan, another track that also has a great history. Formula 1 visited it only four times, located at the foot of a mountain and designed by Stirling Moss, Fangio’s partner in the Mercedes years in the 1950s. Rain is almost always the protagonist on the Japanese track and lThe definition of the 1976 World Cup can attest. It was there that Lauda, 84 days after being on the verge of death in the Green Hell, decided to abandon due to the insecurity that the Fuji track provided under an imposing deluge and left James Hunt with the title served on a platter. Yes, everything that cinema brought to the screen must have been historic. In 2007, on F1’s third visit to Fuji and the first after 30 years of the previous one, the safety car led the peloton during the first 19 laps of the race because the rain did not leave the minimum conditions for racing.
From NLS2 GT3 at the Nurburgring to Fuji Speedway driving a Nissan Z NISMO GT500
Max Verstappen: born to race 🏎️ pic.twitter.com/4kuH4O3h6H
— MV33Racing🏎 (@MV33Racing) March 25, 2026
Over there, Max, in the rain because Fuji otherwise seems non-existent, spun with a Nissan Z NISMO GT500 decorated with the Red Bull logo. The car participates in the Japanese Super GT tournament and it has a two-liter, 550-horsepower four-cylinder turbo engine, which, pushing 1,020 kilos of weight, exceeds 300 km/h. Two touring cars, on two different routes, full of history and four days apart. That marked Max Verstappen’s agenda.
This Thursday, The Dutchman was already in Suzuka to work with the Red Bull F1 team and attend the press. From Friday he will have to drive on the track where the duels between Ayrton Senna and Alain Prost remain forever in memory. The stage where the remembered Brazilian won his three crowns or where Max himself sentenced his second. The same place where Michael Schumacher earned his first star with Ferrari. There Verstappen will close his week, of course, with the car that amuses him the least under the new technical regulations that came into effect this year in F1. The fun, as he himself confessed several times, today is in other cars. Therefore, he does not stop accelerating as much as he can and in the most historic places. That’s Max.
