Max Verstappen says simracing is not just for fun and also provides valuable practice and experience for his Formula 1 career.

The Red Bull driver also races for simracing team Redline with McLaren F1 rival Lando Norris

Verstappen, who usually races on tracks which aren’t on the F1 calendar, said the main value of simracing is it allows him to practice setting up a car.

“You’re basically just doing the same thing,” he said. “You’re always trying to extract the best out if it, you are trying to get the best lap in, you are trying to work on the set-up, how to go faster. You look at onboards, you look at data to again extract more out of it. So basically just doing the same thing without G-forces.

“It’s always trying to just get the best out of it so when I get back [to the track] I’m doing the same because you’re looking at data, onboards, you’re always trying to find things in the set-up to go even faster. [In the] virtual world the set-up is the set-up so you can still do the same kind of thing that you are doing on a [real] car. So you learn from it as well as a driver.”

However he wouldn’t be drawn on whether he or Norris was the quicker driver online. “It depends,” said Verstappen. “He practices a lot, I practice a lot.

“What is the most important is we are driving together, normally it’s in the same team, is that we’re just having fun. But I think pure lap time-wise, as an F1 driver, I think we are all very closely matched.”

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Max Verstappen and Lando Norris simracing

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2019 F1 season