Max Verstappen Takes on 100 Rivals in Karting Showdown
Max Verstappen has spent the last few years making Formula 1 races look like private exhibitions. Now he’s turning that idea into reality.
At Silverstone, the four-time world champion is taking on 100 rivals at once in a made-for-TV karting spectacle, “Max vs 100,” with one brutally simple mission: start at the back, and in 30 laps try to pass every single kart on track.
No strategy calls. No tyre compounds. Just Verstappen, a swarm of opponents and a stopwatch.
A different kind of grid
The event, staged at the home of the British Grand Prix, throws Verstappen into a field unlike anything he faces on a grand prix Sunday. The 100-strong grid is a mash‑up of athletes, streamers, content creators and personalities from across the globe, all united by one aim: keep the Red Bull star behind them for as long as possible.
Among them are popular streamers Pieface, Caedrel and TheDonato, ultrarunner Arda Saatçi, basketball shooting specialist Chris “Lethal Shooter” Matthews, and 2019 Love Island winner Amber Gill. Not your usual FIA entry list, but that’s the point. This is chaos by design.
Every kart is identical. To remove any hint of an excuse, the organisers have fixed the total weight — driver plus kit — at 85kg. Anyone under that threshold gets ballast bolted on. Verstappen doesn’t get a factory engine, a secret setting or a magic button. Just the same machinery and a lot more traffic.
The champion’s challenge
Verstappen knows traffic. He’s carved through fields in the wet, survived restarts, and turned recovery drives into highlight reels. But 100 karts on a tight layout is something else entirely.
“A hundred is a lot, you know,” he told ESPN, with a wry smile. He’s seen the track layout, he knows the scale of what’s coming. “I think how they've set up the track from what they've shown me, I think it will be good. But it's still going to be hectic, for sure.”
Hectic is an understatement. With 30 laps to clear 100 drivers, the Dutchman will need to average more than three overtakes a lap, weaving through a rolling wall of karts where every corner is a potential bottleneck and every mistake costs time he doesn’t have.
Asked how he plans to approach it, Verstappen kept it simple. First, gauge the field. Then attack.
“I think I first need to understand and see the level between drivers,” he said. “I also don't like to overthink the situation. I just need to go with the flow and try to make the best of it.”
That line could have come straight from a grand prix weekend. Read the grip, feel the car, trust the instinct. Only this time, the risk isn’t a lost podium — it’s the possibility of being beaten in the purest form of racing he grew up dominating.
Pride on the line
Verstappen’s karting pedigree is the foundation of his F1 dominance. The sharpness on corner entry, the aggression in wheel‑to‑wheel combat, the ruthless way he closes a door — all of it was forged in karts. Which is why this challenge cuts a little deeper than a standard exhibition.
“I'm hoping that with my background, I should be faster than most. I hope!” he admitted. “I mean, it would be quite embarrassing if they're faster than me!”
That’s the hook. Strip away the F1 glamour and the Red Bull rocket ship and you find a racer who still cares about being the quickest in a kart. Against pros, that’s expected. Against a field of mixed abilities, including influencers and celebrities, the margin for embarrassment widens.
One misjudged move, one tangle in traffic, and the clock starts to feel very small.
The show
“Max vs 100” is being broadcast live globally on ESPN on Disney+, with an hour-long build-up before the race start at 6 p.m. In the U.S., the event also runs on the ESPN App for Unlimited subscribers, with a delayed showing on ESPN2 later in the day.
It’s a format built for television: a superstar dropped into a seemingly impossible task, a cast of underdogs trying to spoil the script, and a clear, unforgiving target — 100 overtakes, 30 laps.
No safety car to save him. No strategy window to flip the race. Just a flat‑out chase from lights out to chequered flag.
Max Verstappen has spent his career hunting down records. At Silverstone, he’s hunting people — 100 of them — in equal machinery. If anyone can turn that into another masterclass, it’s him.
But if even one amateur kart holds him up too long, this might be the rare race where the champion runs out of laps instead of rivals.
