Verstappen’s Nordschleife adventure echoes his historic Suzuka F1 debut

Today, Max Verstappen is ‘back in school’ at the Nurburgring to acquire the necessary Nordschleife permit, which aims to enable his participation in this weekend’s Nurburgring Endurance Series (NLS) races.

It’s a leap into the deep end for the Red Bull star – much like in October 2014 in Suzuka, when he was allowed to contest the first free practice session for Toro Rosso at the Japanese Grand Prix.

In the 2014 Formula 1 season, Toro Rosso raced with Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat, but behind the scenes, Helmut Marko and Jos Verstappen had already agreed that Verstappen Jr. would compete in the full 2015 campaign as a grand prix driver. He was thus prepared for this with Friday outings in Suzuka, Austin, and Sao Paulo.

For his first outing in Suzuka, Verstappen was 17 years and three days old, making him the youngest F1 driver ever to participate in an official race weekend, etching his name into the history books. He replaced Vergne in free practice, and the directive from Marko and Toro Rosso team principal Franz Tost was clear: just don’t damage anything.

“Franz and Helmut always said: ‘You don’t need to drive at the limit; you need to build it up slowly and gain experience’. Okay, no problem,” said Verstappen of his F1 weekend debut in an interview with ServusTV. Essentially, his mission was merely to complete the lap and return the car safely to the pit.

Then, after the first run, Verstappen returned to the pits, “and I had to think about many things first”. Suddenly, Tost approached his car, leaned over the cockpit, and spurred on the young Dutchman: “Everything okay, well driven. But 130R, that’s flat out.”

It’s worth noting that 130R is one of the most legendary corners of the technically demanding Suzuka circuit, and back in 2014, while it was indeed taken flat out, it was still considered a true test of courage. Instructing a young driver to go full throttle there on only his second fast lap was, to say the least, a daring instruction.

Verstappen remembers and laughs: “Of course, I took 130R flat out – but I had a bit of oversteer!” At the end of the session, Verstappen rolled out with a smoking rear and a valve issue but still finished in 12th, four tenths behind Kvyat.

Today, 11 years later, Tost still doesn’t believe he demanded too much of rookie Verstappen on that memorable Friday in Suzuka. His young age should “simply be forgotten” in that context. Tost had “really watched every Formula 3 race of his. And he had car control that was gigantic.”

In an interview with ServusTV, Tost stated: “That Norisring race in the wet, I will never forget it. The lap time in Formula 3 at the Norisring is 57, 58 seconds. And he was a second faster than the rest every lap! The way he moved that car was simply fantastic.

“Then we said, ‘okay, we’ll test him in Adria’. Adria is a small track, not far from us, between Faenza and Venice. So we went there, and with Max, you immediately noticed: he had no problems with the speed of his car. He also had no problems with braking.

“Normally, a driver needs time to adapt to the deceleration of a Formula 1 car. That’s an enormous challenge. You’re subjected to 3, 4, 5g. Or then the acceleration. And he immediately got to grips with the car. And we wouldn’t have let him drive if we weren’t a hundred percent convinced that he could do it.

Franz Tost, Team Principal, Toro Rosso, and Max Verstappen, Toro Rosso

Photo by: Steven Tee / Motorsport Images

“It was clear that he would drive for us in 2015. And then we said: ‘Okay, let’s start right away!’ Suzuka was the next race weekend. And Suzuka is difficult, but for Max, it was absolutely no problem. Why? Because he simply has that car control, because he simply wasn’t overwhelmed by the speed, because he was very, very good on the brakes, and because he really had everything under control. Otherwise, we wouldn’t have done it.

“I was convinced that we weren’t taking any risks, and if we say he was 16 years old… Max started karting at five or six years old. That means he already had 10 years of racing experience. That’s a huge difference. And he had the Jos Verstappen school. Every corner was flat out. And that’s why I wasn’t at all uneasy, and I was full of optimism that it would work out with Max.”

And so it did. Verstappen contested the 2015 season alongside Carlos Sainz in a Toro Rosso team with two F1 rookies. Verstappen won the internal duel on championship points with 49 compared to 18, even though he narrowly lost the qualifying duel eight to 10. In 2016, Verstappen started again at Toro Rosso, but from Barcelona onwards, he moved up to Red Bull in place of Kvyat.

There, at the Spanish Grand Prix, he won his very first race alongside Daniel Ricciardo. The rest is history – and Verstappen, who experiences another premiere this weekend on the Nurburgring Nordschleife, considered a test of courage in motorsport, is now a four-time F1 world champion.