Max Verstappen ahead of his home race at Spa-Francorchamps: “It’s going to be tough”

As a 17-year-old, Max Verstappen pulled off one of the best overtaking manoeuvres of the 2015 Grand Prix season at Spa-Francorchamps. Eleven years on, he is a three-time Grand Prix winner at this classic race in the Ardennes.

One colour is set to stand out this coming weekend in the lush green forests of the Ardennes – orange. It is expected that many Max Verstappen fans will make the pilgrimage to Spa-Francorchamps from the nearby Netherlands, and the Red Bull Racing driver loves his home race.

Verstappen, born in Hasselt, Belgium, has now competed in eleven Belgian Grands Prix. He has won three times (2021 to 2023), finished third twice (2017 and 2020), and in 2021 he started from pole position here. He also won a Formula 1 Sprint race here in 2023 and 2025.

In 2026, Verstappen will have his work cut out for him. Red Bull Racing has made progress over the course of the season, but energy management proved tricky at Silverstone, and this challenge will be at least as difficult in Belgium.

Verstappen had already remarked with a great deal of sarcasm during the British Grand Prix at Silverstone: “Spa and Monza are sure to be brilliant with these cars. That’s a real shame, because Spa is one of my favourite circuits. But I’m afraid, with this energy management, it’s going to feel completely different this year.”

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His team-mate Fernando Alonso knows: “You can’t release energy on every straight, otherwise you’ll run out of juice too soon. If you use energy at Spa from the first corner, La Source, right through to Turn 5 at Les Combes to attack an opponent or fend them off, then that’s it for the rest of the lap – finito.”

“If you use energy on those two straights – which would be the optimal approach – then there’s no energy usage at all for a whole minute in the second sector. So we’ll probably have to save a bit in those sections to be able to release energy again from Turn 14 (Stavelot) to the Bus Stop chicane.”

And that leads to a driving style that Verstappen and Alonso have described as unnatural: lifting off the throttle on the straights, even downshifting, to conserve energy, rather than going full throttle into the next corner – “it just doesn’t feel right” (Verstappen).

A lot of love for Spa-Francorchamps

A few years ago, Max said of racing in the Ardennes: “I’m always blown away by the incredible support in Belgium. Spa is one of my favourites – the setting, the fast corners, the history; this circuit is a classic for good reason.”

It was a love that blossomed quickly. When Verstappen competed in his first Grand Prix at Spa-Francorchamps in 2015, he was still only 17, driving for Toro Rosso (now the Racing Bulls) – and immediately pulled off one of the most breathtaking overtaking manoeuvres of the year.

Overtaking an opponent on the outside at Blanchimont is not for the faint-hearted. The driver he overtook that day was Felipe Nasr in the Sauber. Former Formula 1 driver Martin Brundle marvelled: “Do these young lads know no fear? That manoeuvre was incredible. It shows just how much self-confidence Max has.”