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David Terrien – Photo Credit: Joerg Mitter \/ Red Bull Content Pool<\/p>\nMax Verstappen will return to his karting roots in September as he takes on 100 rivals in what is being pitched as the biggest go-kart race ever staged.<\/p>\n
The four-time Formula 1 world champion will headline a one-off event called Max vs 100 at Silverstone on September 16.<\/p>\n
Rather than racing from the front, Verstappen will start behind a field of 100 other racers, made up of athletes, streamers, personalities and fans, with the objective of overtaking every kart ahead of him.<\/p>\n
The event will be broadcast live globally on Disney+, while viewers in the United States will be able to watch via the ESPN App before a delayed ESPN2 broadcast later in the day.<\/p>\n
“For me, it’s always nice to return,” Verstappen said. “In go-karts you learn all the basics: starts, defending, overtaking.<\/p>\n
“I spent a long period of my life go-karting, so it’s always nice to come back and drive them again.”<\/p>\n
Verstappen began karting at four years old and rose rapidly through national and international competition, winning multiple European and world titles before making his F1 debut in 2015.<\/p>\n
Although Verstappen has spent more than a decade racing single-seaters, he believes reverting back to karting will come naturally.<\/p>\n
“It’s about understanding the grip of the go-kart,” he said. “I’ve done so many years in go-karting that you quite naturally get back into things.”<\/p>\n
French driver and kart designer David Terrien, who has created the circuit layout, said accommodating 101 competitors in a single race required an entirely new approach.<\/p>\n
David Terrien – Photo Credit: Joerg Mitter \/ Red Bull Content Pool<\/p>\n
“Creating a track for 101 drivers at the same time has never been done, never been seen,” Terrien said.<\/p>\n
With Verstappen typically accustomed to running at the front-end of F1 races, the format is intended to recreate the challenge of working through traffic.<\/p>\n
Terrien expects the event to place a premium on racecraft rather than outright speed.<\/p>\n
“You’re going to have Max showcasing all these skills of [working] through the traffic, trying to prepare and plan where he can overtake people,” he said.<\/p>\n
The field will include a range of Red Bull athletes and creators, including ultrarunner Arda Saat\u00e7i, basketball coach Chris Matthews, freestyle mountain biker Matt Jones, and streamers TheGrefg, Caedrel and TheDonato.<\/p>\n
Whether Verstappen can actually pass all 100 rivals remains the question.<\/p>\n
Red Bull sim racing driver Sebastian Job, who helped test the format during development, said even simulations involving half the intended field proved challenging.<\/p>\n
“I think to overtake 100 cars is going to be extremely difficult,” Job said. “Today we did it with 50, and even that was a challenge to do it in the allotted time. He’s got his work cut out for him.”<\/p>\n
Verstappen, however, appears more intrigued by the unpredictability than concerned by the difficulty.<\/p>\n
Asked what he was looking forward to most, his answer reflected the chaotic nature of the concept.<\/p>\n
“Just seeing the carnage unfold in front of me,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Max Verstappen will return to his karting roots in September as he takes on 100 rivals in what…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":868076,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[572],"tags":[64,63,806,805,803,804,85],"class_list":["post-868075","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-motosport","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-motor","tag-motor-sports","tag-motosport","tag-motosports","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868075","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=868075"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/868075\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/868076"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=868075"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=868075"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=868075"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}