Verstappen: 'The marketing part takes me a month a year'

Max Verstappen is used to the Formula 1 world and its hectic calendar. After all, the Dutch Red Bull Racing driver is driving his eighth season. The obligatory sideline activities are more problematic for Verstappen. Yet the two-time F1 champion manages to find some kind of balance.

Verstappen talks to De Telegraaf about that. The increasingly crowded calendar is not really the problem for him. After all, the races are what Verstappen does it for. His main problem is the marketing activities that take up a lot of his free time.

Verstappen: "A Thursday before a race weekend is sometimes already very long, although it depends on where we are. Outside the Grands Prix, there is also simulator work. But I spend more than a month a year on marketing, for example. At a certain point, you don't feel like doing that anymore."

With his girlfriend Kelly Piquet and her daughter, Verstappen also has a family life. How the Dutchman combines that? Verstappen: "My girlfriend [Kelly Piquet, daughter of three-time F1 champion Nelson Piquet] understands the world I live in. That makes a difference. And when I'm at home, I try to combine it as well as I can."