Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen is one of Kelvin van der Linde’s Instagram followers – how it came about and what the two have been talking about
More than 88,000 followers follow Kelvin van der Linde’s full-throttle life on Instagram – and one of them is none other than Formula 1 World Champion Max Verstappen! The Dutchman is “the most famous Instagram follower” of the Abt Audi driver, who reveals that the two are even in contact with each other.
“Funnily enough, yes, because he’s into GT3 and has his own cars, then we talked about how the cars relate to each other,” said van der Linde in an interview with ran.de, recalling that Verstappen himself has a few GT3 cars in his garage. “He used to drive an Audi.”
“And earlier, when [Thierry] Vermeulen wanted to get involved, he asked me a bit about which teams are good and which racing series you can drive in. That was really cool,” smiles the South African, who now also has German citizenship.
The relationship between the two Dutchmen should be familiar to German motorsport fans by now: Thierry Vermeulen is the son of Raymond Vermeulen, Max Verstappen’s long-time manager.
The Formula 1 world champion is in turn considered Vermeulen’s mentor, who began his racing career in the GT4 European Series in the 2020 season and fought his way up through the Porsche Carrera Cup and the ADAC GT Masters to the DTM.
Joint races with Verstappen & Norris
The Red Bull driver, who is working on his own GT3 team with Verstappen.com Racing, is on hand to give Vermeulen tips and advice, most recently at a two-day test in Portimao, where Verstappen also sat in the cockpit of Emil Frey Racing’s Ferrari 296 GT3 himself.
However, the connection to the GT3 scene is not the only reason why Kelvin van der Linde and Max Verstappen know each other. “The funny thing is that Lando Norris, Verstappen and I used to do a lot of sim racing together in the coronavirus era,” smiles the DTM driver.
However, they did not talk about the collision at the Formula 1 race in Spielberg, when Norris and Verstappen clashed in the battle for victory, reveals van der Linde. “But they were [fighting] back then too and now it’s happening in Formula 1 too. It’s funny!”
