The Hidden Steering Technique That Makes Max Verstappen Unbeatable
Picture the Nürburgring Nordschleife, widely considered the most dangerous and unforgiving twenty-five kilometres of tarmac in the world. It is a terrifying ribbon of asphalt winding through the dense German forest, famously dubbed the “Green Hell” by racing legends. It is not a place for the faint-hearted, nor is it a circuit where drivers typically experiment. Yet, during a recent GT3 outing, a highly experienced professional racing driver named Daniel Juncadella—a man who has spent the last fifteen years of his life wrestling high-performance machines around this exact track—witnessed something that left him entirely speechless. He watched his teammate, Max Verstappen, navigate a seemingly unremarkable corner in a way that defied every conventional law of motorsport. Juncadella turned to his race engineer in utter disbelief and confessed that he had never seen anyone do that in his entire life, and worse, nobody could adequately explain how it was even physically possible.
The specific corner was merely another high-speed bend in a relentless sequence, but the context was utterly vital. Verstappen was following another car dangerously closely. In the precarious world of high-downforce racing, this level of proximity is the exact scenario that prompts veteran endurance drivers to immediately lift off the throttle. The turbulent, disturbed air trailing behind the leading car is effectively aerodynamic poison to the trailing vehicle, instantly stripping away front-end grip. At a circuit as lethal as the Nürburgring, losing the front end of your car does not simply mean running wide into a forgiving gravel trap; it usually guarantees a catastrophic impact with the barriers. However, Verstappen stubbornly refused to back off. He remained incredibly close, far closer than the laws of physics and aerodynamics should logically allow. Furthermore, he executed this seemingly impossible feat not just once, but lap after lap, corner after corner.
Following the race, Juncadella pulled the reigning Formula One World Champion aside and demanded to know how he had managed it. Verstappen calmly explained his methodology. The explanation was so incredibly profound and stunning that when motorsport journalists inevitably came knocking, Juncadella flatly refused to share the secret. He openly admitted that he would never have conceived of the trick himself, and he preferred to keep it closely guarded. This astonishing revelation, however, did not materialise out of thin air. It was forged in the blistering crucible of Formula One, refined over four world championship campaigns, and perfected through thousands of hours of simulators and track time. Once you truly understand what Verstappen is executing behind the steering wheel, it fundamentally alters your perception of modern racing. It explains his unyielding dominance, not just in Germany, but across the entire global Grand Prix calendar.
To properly unpack the sheer brilliance of Verstappen’s secret, we must first revisit the most fundamental concept of motorsport physics: the grip budget. When a racing car approaches and navigates a corner, it possesses a finite, fixed amount of grip across its four tyres. You can conceptualise this grip as a strict financial budget. A driver can choose to spend their grip budget on heavy braking, sharp turning, or aggressive accelerating. However, the exact moment a driver attempts to execute all three actions simultaneously without a meticulous plan, they immediately go bankrupt. The tyres break traction, the car aggressively spins, and the race is instantaneously ruined. Every single driver on the Formula One grid acutely understands this theory. Every driver spends their entire career carefully managing that precarious grip budget. The defining difference does not lie in theoretical knowledge, but rather in the flawless execution. This is precisely where Verstappen separates himself from the contemporary grid and arguably from almost every other driver in the history of the sport.
The simplest way to comprehend this technique is to begin with what Max Verstappen absolutely despises: understeer. Verstappen has stated publicly, frequently, and without any hesitation, that a racing car fundamentally cannot be fast if it suffers from understeer. When he drove the early iterations of the 2022 Red Bull challenger, he heavily criticised the car because the front nose refused to rotate crisply into the corners. The front tyres were constantly fighting the turn rather than committing to the apex. He vividly described this heavy, unresponsive feeling as an absolute nightmare. Fascinatingly, the vast majority of drivers in Formula One actually prefer a degree of understeer. They actively desire a setup that pushes the nose slightly wide rather than one that unpredictably snaps at the rear. Understeer is inherently safe and controllable. If the car pushes wide, the driver simply lifts off the throttle, the grip returns, and they smoothly continue. Seven-time world champion Lewis Hamilton has constructed much of his legendary career upon setups that heavily favour immense front-end stability over twitchy rotation. Fernando Alonso employs a similar philosophy. That comforting understeer provides them with a reliable foundation to lean on.
Verstappen, however, demands the exact opposite. He craves a car that constantly feels as though it is dancing on the terrifying precipice of snapping out of control. He desires a loose rear end, instantaneous rotation, and a violently rapid response to his steering inputs. This is not born out of youthful recklessness; it is a cold, calculated mathematical advantage. A car that rotates aggressively and early through a corner delivers one supreme benefit above all others: it allows the driver to apply the throttle significantly earlier. In Formula One, the long straights are where the monumental lap time differences are truly forged. Getting back on the power just a fraction of a second earlier than your rival compounds massively over the length of a straightaway.
However, the aggressive setup is merely one half of the equation. The true magic lies in a driving technique that goes far beyond simple vehicle preference. If you closely observe Verstappen approaching a heavy braking zone on an onboard camera, the differences become starkly apparent. Most professional drivers execute cornering in a distinct, two-step sequence. The brake pedal is compressed incredibly hard, the car drastically slows in a straight line, and only once the majority of the braking phase is complete do they turn the steering wheel. First stop, then turn. Verstappen completely discards this conventional wisdom. He brakes in two distinct, overlapping phases. He initiates a massive, hard application of the brakes, but instead of releasing them before turning, he begins a gradual, highly progressive release of the pedal that seamlessly continues deep into the turn-in phase. He is actively steering whilst simultaneously braking.
Because of this overlapping technique, the car is violently rotating whilst it is still aggressively shedding speed. The front and rear axles are loading and unloading dynamically at the same time, rather than in a predictable sequence. To an untrained outside observer, the Red Bull looks as though it is hurtling wildly out of control. The rear end visibly steps out, and the nose dives into the apex at an angle that practically guarantees a spin. Yet, the spin never materialises. This is known as extreme trail braking, and Verstappen takes it to a terrifying limit that most of his Formula One peers simply refuse to attempt. Whilst trailing the brake deep into the apex, his right foot is already hovering, managing the throttle pedal on the absolute knife-edge of disaster. He is feeling through the chassis for the exact millisecond when the rear tyres are about to break away permanently. In that fleeting microsecond, he releases the brake entirely, catches the sliding rear end with a microscopic twitch of the steering wheel, and buries the throttle. The car is suddenly pointing perfectly down the next straight, already accelerating whilst his rivals are still patiently waiting for their cars to finish turning. This relentless accumulation of milliseconds on every single corner translates into utterly devastating race pace.
But the true genius of this technique—the secret that shocked the GT3 paddock at the Nürburgring—is how it miraculously solves the most unsolvable problem in modern motorsport: dirty air. In Formula One, following a rival car closely is universally acknowledged as a nightmare. The leading car punches a massive hole in the atmosphere, leaving behind a chaotic wake of turbulent, low-pressure air. When the pursuing car enters this dirty air, its aerodynamic surfaces—particularly the highly sensitive front wing—are starved of the clean airflow required to generate downforce. The front-end grip practically evaporates. Drivers are traditionally forced to back off, manually increasing the gap to the car ahead to find clean air, sacrificing crucial lap time in the process. They become aerodynamic hostages to the car in front.
Verstappen’s extreme trail braking and severe oversteer setup provide the ultimate escape route from this hostage situation. Because he is heavily relying on mechanical weight transfer and extreme trail braking to aggressively rotate the rear of the car, he is far less dependent on the front wing to drag the nose into the corner. When he dives into the turbulent wake of a rival, and the aerodynamic grip at the front inevitably disappears, his driving style naturally compensates. He uses the brake pedal to manipulate the car’s weight, throwing the rear end around to achieve the necessary rotation, completely bypassing the lack of front downforce. He forces the car to turn through sheer mechanical manipulation rather than aerodynamic reliance. This allows him to remain terrifyingly close to the gearbox of the car ahead, lap after lap, maintaining relentless, suffocating pressure without destroying his own front tyres.
This revelation casts his recent extracurricular activities in a completely new light. Verstappen has not been treating these GT3 endurance races at the Nürburgring as a relaxing holiday away from the pressures of Formula One. He has been ruthlessly utilising them as a high-stakes technical laboratory. The chaotic conditions of a twenty-four-hour race—dense traffic, varying grip levels, unpredictable weather, and constant dirty air—represent a hyper-compressed version of every single challenge a driver faces. He is actively training. He is experimenting with trailing brake pressures and extreme rotation against professional drivers who have zero obligation to yield to him. In the midst of that intense environment, he refined a trick that even seasoned veterans could not comprehend.
The profound question now hanging over the entire Formula One paddock is what this means for the immediate future of the sport. If this technique is indeed the cornerstone of his current invincibility, the implications for rival teams are deeply troubling. Can incredibly talented drivers like Lando Norris and Oscar Piastri at McLaren fundamentally rewire their driving instincts to replicate this extreme method? Can a seasoned veteran like Lewis Hamilton, who has spent almost two decades perfecting a completely contrary, stability-focused driving style at Mercedes and now Ferrari, adapt to such a violently unstable philosophy?
The prevailing narrative surrounding Red Bull’s recent dominance often points to aerodynamic supremacy, brilliant strategy, or raw engine power. Whilst those elements are undoubtedly crucial, the story emerging from the dark forests of the Nürburgring suggests something far more intimidating. It paints a picture of a driver who is not merely relying on a superior machine, but who is fundamentally rewriting the physical rulebook of how a racing car is piloted. Formula One has spent two decades desperately searching for the next Michael Schumacher—a generational talent who changes the very parameters of the sport. The refusal of a seasoned professional to publicly share Verstappen’s steering secret suggests that this generational shift has already occurred. The most terrifying prospect for the rest of the grid is not his championship trophies, his lucrative contract, or his formidable team. The true danger is that Max Verstappen continually invents new ways to manipulate the laws of physics, whilst his rivals are still desperately trying to understand the last one.
