‘No bullsh*t’ Max Verstappen story told with brutally honest feedback to ex-F2 driver

Red Bull’s Max Verstappen.

A former Formula 2 racer has revealed how he was shocked when Max Verstappen not only knew who he was, but how he’d just messed up his own qualifying.

Max Verstappen is well known for being blunt and straight to the point, as former Formula 2 racer Clement Novalak found out when he was introduced to the Dutch racer in 2022.

Max Verstappen a ‘no bulls**t driver’

Now racing in LMP2 in the European Le Mans Series and IMSA, Clement Novalak jumped up into Formula 2 in late 2021 and raced for MP Motorsport for a full campaign in 2022.

Being introduced to reigning F1 World Champion Max Verstappen during ’22, Novalak recounted being very impressed as Verstappen knew exactly who he was and, not only that, was able to give the French driver some blunt advice on his earlier qualifying session – which race weekend this was at wasn’t made clear.

“I personally love Max, in the sense like he’s a no bulls**t driver, yeah, he comes to the track, gets in the car, drives, and f**ks off,” Novalak told the Track Limits podcast about the Red Bull driver.

“A lot of people don’t like that because they don’t get to know the guy properly.

“But he’s one of the very few guys who, when I first got introduced to him through a friend, Max turned around to me and goes ‘If you hadn’t f**ked up Sector 2 in qualifying, you could have done a much better job, mate. You could have been top five!”

“I was like, ‘You know who the f**k I am?!’

“Then we had a good half-hour chat about racing as a whole and, for a double world champion, or a world champion at the time, for him to give you that time – not a lot of drivers do that.

“In F1, obviously they’re very busy and focused, they don’t get much time, and there’s probably two or three drivers like that, who don’t change.

“If you want to talk about a driver who is a real fan of motorsport, it’s Verstappen.”

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Novalak’s comments on Verstappen’s love of motorsport are backed up by the decisions made by the reigning World Champion in recent years, who established his own ‘Verstappen.com Racing’ team in 2022, in partnership with Red Bull.

Under the Verstappen umbrella, he has combined racing projects from the sim racing world – through Team Redline – and the real world, which includes GT3 racing and rallying.

Team Redline, the sim racing team Verstappen races with whenever his schedule allows, have a state-of-the-art simulator racing facility in Tilburg in the Netherlands, while Jos Verstappen and Thierry Vermeulen – son of Max’s manager Raymond – race under the Verstappen.com name in their motorsport activities in rallying and GT3.

“Racing has always been my biggest passion in life, from the moment I first stepped into a go-kart until today. Besides my own Formula 1 career, racing is what I dedicate most of my time to,” Verstappen said.

“I am truly happy that, with the Verstappen.com Racing team, I can share the love for racing with drivers and teams I feel closely connected to.

“Apart from the fun it brings me, I can also share my racing knowledge with them, which hopefully helps everybody to improve themselves.”

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