Verstappen has 30 laps to pass 100 karters tonight, and losing would be embarrassing
Max Verstappen will start from the back of a 101 kart grid at Silverstone tonight with thirty laps to overtake every single one of the hundred people in front of him. That is more than three passes a lap, without a break, in a kart he has barely sat in for a decade. He has already said out loud what the risk is: losing would be embarrassing.
In this article
- Thirty laps, one hundred passes, and a shortcut everybody gets
- A circuit built for 101 karts, which has never been done
- His last proper kart run was in 2016, and he does not miss it
- Streamers, athletes and fans, not a grid of racing drivers
- Disney+ from six o’clock, with everybody’s radio open
- Our gut feeling: the first five laps decide this
- The number that will tell the story
The race is over
Verstappen cleared all one hundred karts in fifteen of the thirty laps, without using his own shortcut. Jacky Martens of De Limburger finished second. Our full report is here. The live log below stays as it was written.
Live from Silverstone
Martens is second: The De Limburger journalist is running behind Verstappen and ahead of everybody else. He led the race, he was passed, he bought himself back in with his shortcut, and he is still there at the front of what is left.
Verstappen leads: He is through the lot and out in front on his own. Whether that is the end of it depends on whether anybody behind him is still holding an unused shortcut, because that is the one thing that can put a rival back ahead of him.
Martens is back: Having been passed, the De Limburger journalist played his shortcut and rejoined ahead of Verstappen. So being overtaken is not final after all, as long as you still have your one cut in hand. That changes the arithmetic of the whole race.
Lap 13 of 30, ninety eight down: Two of the hundred were left with seventeen laps to find them. Martens had moved across to defend and Verstappen was already past him.
Verstappen never used his shortcut: He was given one cut of his own and got to the front of a hundred karts without ever spending it. Oster played his and it bought him a chunk of track but left him with nothing in reserve.
The last three worked together: The leading trio cooperated to keep Verstappen behind. He was four seconds back and lapping around three seconds quicker.
Leading the race: Jacky Martens, a journalist with the Dutch regional newspaper De Limburger. Of the hundred people invited to hold Verstappen up, the one doing it best is a reporter.
Lap 6: Ninth. Ninety two down.
Lap 3: Up to 25th, seventy six of the hundred already out.
Lap 1: Verstappen cleared 64 karts on the opening lap alone, from 101st to 37th. A safety car then neutralised the race.
Thirty laps, one hundred passes, and a shortcut everybody gets
The rules are simple enough to explain in a sentence and brutal enough to keep you watching. Verstappen has to pass all one hundred rivals inside thirty laps. The moment his kart is fully clear of somebody, that driver is out. It turns out that is not quite final, though: a driver who has been passed can play their unused shortcut and rejoin ahead of him, which is exactly what Jacky Martens did after Verstappen went by. What counts is how many are left when the laps run out.
The grid was set by qualifying, with the hundred split into five groups of twenty and each driver given a single flying lap. Verstappen does not get one. He starts last, by design.
Everybody runs the same kart, with ballast added so that no driver is lighter than 85 kilograms, which removes the usual karting advantage of simply being small. Each of the hundred is allowed one shortcut, a section of track they may cut once. Verstappen has one as well, which the published previews said would not open until the second half of the race. Every radio is open, his included, and the broadcast will be cutting between them.
A circuit built for 101 karts, which has never been done
The layout is not Silverstone’s Grand Prix circuit and it is not the usual kart track either. It was drawn specifically for this by David Terrien, the French driver and kart circuit designer, who is also acting as race director tonight.
“Creating a track for 101 drivers at the same time has never been done, never been seen,” Terrien said. That is the part we find most interesting. A normal kart circuit chokes at twenty. This one has to hold five times that number and still leave room for somebody to get by, which means wide entries, multiple lines and corners that reward a driver willing to commit to the outside.
Terrien has said the challenge will force Verstappen to show the full range: planning where to pass, working out which of the hundred will move and which will not, and picking his moment several corners in advance. Anyone who has watched him thread a Red Bull through traffic on a Sunday knows he can do it. Doing it a hundred times in half an hour is another matter.
His last proper kart run was in 2016, and he does not miss it
Verstappen came out of karting the way almost every modern champion does, but he has not driven one seriously since 2016. Asked whether he missed it, he gave the kind of flat answer he usually saves for a bad strategy call.
“I don’t miss it,” he said. “It’s very different in that sense. You can get arm pump and stuff in a shifter, and I just feel like I enjoy more just being on a big track with a GT car.”
He is not pretending this will be comfortable. “A hundred is a lot, you know, but 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,” he said. And on the obvious risk: “I’m hoping that with my background, I should be faster than most. I hope! I mean, it would be quite embarrassing if they’re faster than me!”
Asked what he was looking forward to most, he answered like someone who has watched a lot of first laps: “Just seeing the carnage unfold in front of me.”
Streamers, athletes and fans, not a grid of racing drivers
The hundred are not ringers. They are content creators, Red Bull athletes from other sports, and fans, with a handful of people who can actually drive mixed in, among them the karting creator GoKartGod, Si Hyun Park, David Egan and the YouTuber Wirtual. Red Bull Racing simulator driver Sebastian Job has been linked to the field as well.
Job put the scale of it plainly: “to overtake 100 cars is going to be extremely difficult.” He is right, and not because the hundred are quick. It is because a hundred slower karts on one circuit produce exactly the kind of unpredictable, non racing behaviour that no amount of Formula 1 experience prepares you for.
Disney+ from six o’clock, with everybody’s radio open
The build up starts at 17:00 British time, which is 18:00 in the Netherlands, and the race itself goes green an hour later, so 19:00 for us. The whole thing runs about an hour. It streams on Disney+ globally, with the ESPN App carrying it for ESPN Unlimited subscribers in the United States and a delayed showing on ESPN2.
Our gut feeling: the first five laps decide this
The arithmetic looks impossible until you remember how the back of any large field behaves. The slowest twenty are going to be badly bunched in the opening laps, and Verstappen should clear a big block of them before the race settles down. If he is not through forty or fifty inside the first third, the maths stops working, because the drivers left will be the quicker ones and they will be spread out.
The other thing we will be watching is patience. Every rival is holding one shortcut, and they will use it the moment he is close enough to be a threat, which means a driver he has spent half a lap catching can suddenly be gone again. That is the sort of thing that makes somebody force the next move, and forcing a move in a kart with a hundred others around usually ends with a spin.
The number that will tell the story
Forget the result for a moment and watch the count. If the graphic says twenty or fewer left with ten laps to go, he finishes it. If it is still showing fifty at half distance, this becomes a very long evening for him, and a very good one for a hundred amateurs who will never stop talking about it.
We will be following it, and our full 2027 calendar coverage is here if you want something to read before the lights go out. If you want the reason overtaking in a pack is harder than it looks, our explainer on dirty air covers it, and Verstappen’s season so far is on his driver page.
