Max Verstappen Teases F1 Fans With Cryptic Clues on 2025 Helmet

Nov 23, 2024; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA;  Oracle Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen (1)  celebrates his championship victory following the Las Vegas Grand Prix at Las Vegas Circuit. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images
Nov 23, 2024; Las Vegas, Nevada, USA; Oracle Red Bull Racing driver Max Verstappen (1) celebrates his championship victory following the Las Vegas Grand Prix at Las Vegas Circuit. Mandatory Credit: Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images / Gary A. Vasquez-Imagn Images

Max Verstappen has teased Formula 1 fans with cryptic hints about his 2025 helmet during a recent Twitch stream. Max, racing enthusiast that he is, had just competed in the iRacing 24 Hours of Daytona over the weekend.

Pooling his talents with teammates Diogo Pinto and Chris Lulham, they represented Team Redline. They were initially in a position to lead in their #20 Redline BMW M Hybrid V8, but a couple of crashes led to drive-through penalties. This left them seven laps behind the leading Ferrari.

The iRacing 24 Hours of Daytona is quite a spectacle in the sim racing world, modeled after the Rolex 24 At Daytona. This virtual event sees massive participation, with thousands of drivers taking part. It includes various classes of cars like GTD and LMP2, and this year featured the high-tech GTP class. Max drove in the GTP category, behind the wheel of the BMW M Hybrid V8, a peak of hybrid endurance racing machinery. The Dutchman has a history in this event, having won the GTD category the previous year, alongside Gianni Vecchio and Ole Steinbråten.

Verstappen is no stranger to sim racing, with him recently involved in other events as well. Prior to the Daytona race, he took part in the IMSA Global Esports Championship, driving an Acura in a Verstappen.Com Racing entry. Even there, sim racing's challenges didn't make it any easier, as he faced a drive-through penalty due to a collision on the first lap.

“To be honest, I was already gaming as a kid. It started on a controller when I was four or five years old. Racing on F1 games, rally games, MotoGP games, I did all of it, and I would say around 2008, more or less, simulators really started to be more and more popular,  so that's when I had one as well.," he told SI on F1 late last year.

"From there the games have grown massively, and everything has become so much more accurate and precise and that's why I think nowadays simulation is so well made that you can really train someone.”

"You don't feel that in a simulator," Verstappen described about the absence of real-world physical cues in sim racing. He clarified his choice of equipment, saying, "I drive on a static sim at home, because the motion sims are slower." Yet, comparing the worlds of sim and actual racing, he noted, "The biggest similarity is how you work on the car setup and strategies. For me it is 90 to 95 percent the same."

The difference between real-world racing and karting is no secret:

"That's the thing most people struggle with naturally, even if they're a good sim racer, when they get in a real car, it's the physicality of it. Plus the awareness that if I hit the wall, it's going to hurt, where in sim racing that doesn't happen. So it's a bit of, you know, these things together."

During his stream, however, he gave away some clues about what his 2025 F1 season helmet could look like:

"That's the helmet that I drove with in my early years in karting - and also my design from last year.

"It will be similar this year, but slightly different.

"That's just my own design and how my father started. I like that the best, quite basic. I went back to the traditional, old-school design, which I like the best."

The event also saw other big names like Beitske Visser and the Scuderia Ferrari HP Esports Team, raising its profile with nine cars using the Ferrari 499P Hypercar.


Published
Alex Harrington
ALEX HARRINGTON

Alex is the editor-in-chief of F1 editorial. He fell in love with F1 at the young age of 7 after hearing the scream of naturally aspirated V10s echo through his grandparents' lounge. That year he watched as Michael Schumacher took home his fifth championship win with Ferrari, and has been unable to look away since.