It might be mid-2024 but Max Verstappen has won another title already! Well, no, it’s not a racing achievement that the Dutchman has bagged this time. Rather, he is the new meme lord of the Formula 1 town. While it might look like the 3-time World Champion lives, breathes, and eats motorsports, the truth is far from it. Max is very much into following all the latest memes that pop up in the F1 world. Are you wondering how we realized it? Verstappen just enacted a viral meme scene on his latest stream.

Whenever there is a break between a few races in Formula 1, Max Verstappen streams his gameplay online. As the Red Bull racer was doing such a live session on Twitch recently, he had a funny banter with his teammates. At that point, he enacted a scene from the popular Netflix show ‘Drive to Survive’ which is based on Formula 1. In the 5th season of DTS, the camera captured the famous scene from 2022 when all the Team Principals of the different F1 squads met with F1 CEO Stefano Domenicali for a solution.

When the 2022 season started, one of the FIA regulations caused the teams to change the way they manufacture their race cars. Thus, some of the cars caused a kind of jerking or porpoising that caused problems for the racers. While Red Bull faced no such trouble, Mercedes did and the Silver Arrows wanted the FIA to intervene. All of the teams met with Domenicali to ask the authorities to give a directive to remove the threat of porpoising. During the meeting, rival team bosses Toto Wolff and Christian Horner had a row.

On ‘Drive to Survive’, Mercedes’ Wolff headed into an argument with Horner. The Red Bull leader wanted the FIA to take no action as his team’s racers faced no problem. The Briton said, “Well, change your car! You’ve got a problem. Change your ****ing car!” In reply, Toto Wolff had said, “Then you change your car because [Sergio Perez] has been saying that the car is f*****!” Enacting the same scene, Max Verstappen mocked Toto Wolff’s complaints. Well, Max might still be streaming his gameplay but his career in professional sim racing has come under threat–but why?

Red Bull has made a “strong recommendation” against Max Verstappen’s sim racing

Max Verstappen is not just a successful F1 racer in real life, he is also an equally amazing racer on the simulator. Competing for his team ‘Team Redline’, the Dutchman took part in the 24 Hours of Spa sim race during the night before his appearance at the Belgian GP. Max was up till 3:00 am racing for Redline. And when he reached Spa for his race for Red Bull, he was in an irritable mood and he spewed expletives on the team radio.

Concerned with the 3-time World Champion, Red Bull Advisor Helmut Marko has claimed to advise him against staying up so late for his sim races. The octagenarian said, “We have agreed that in the future he will not drive well past 00:00, even though he has a completely different rhythm of life. It is a very strong recommendation.” Thus, Marko has reiterated that the remark from Red Bull is a recommendation and not an actual ban.

Max Verstappen has now said that all news about Red Bull banning him from sim racing was fake. However, Marko’s comments show that his team is not happy about his ‘alter-career’ either. So, will the Dutchman leave his simulator to respect his boss’ wishes, or is professional sim racing too dear to him?