- Max Verstappen posted a statement defending his Verstappen Racing teammate Chris Lulham after Lulham faced online hate for a crash that cost the team a likely win at the GT World Challenge Europe finale in Portimao.
- Lulham, a former esports racer who won the Radical Cup UK with 16 wins in 18 races before stepping up to full time GT3 racing this year, made contact with a rival Mercedes at Turn 8 and served a drive-through penalty that ended the team’s result for the race.
- Verstappen took over the car in 24th place with 45 minutes left and fought it back to ninth, then used his own platform to tell fans that “there’s no place for this kind of abuse in our sport or anywhere else.”
“I Also Feel I Need to Speak Up”
Max Verstappen is used to writing short, upbeat posts after a race weekend. This one started that way. “Exciting weekend!” he wrote on X after the GT World Challenge Europe season finale at Portimao. “Was very happy to be racing our GT3 car in Portimao. There were some ups and downs, but as a team we learnt a lot.” Then the tone shifted. “I also feel I need to speak up about the hate and harassment Chris has received after the race,” Verstappen wrote. “Everyone can have their opinions about what happened on track, but these personal attacks are not okay. Chris had a really strong stint and mistakes can happen. There’s no place for this kind of abuse in our sport or anywhere else.”
Chris who, most Formula 1 fans would have asked a week earlier. By Sunday night, Verstappen had made sure they knew.
From Esports to a Mercedes at Portimao
Chris Lulham built his name in esports before he ever sat in a real GT car, winning the Radical Cup UK with 16 victories in 18 races on his way to a full promotion to Verstappen Racing’s Pro driver line-up this season. Portimao was supposed to be a showcase for that promotion. Ben Barnicoat drove the opening stint of the three hour race and dragged the number 3 Mercedes from well outside the top fifteen into podium contention before handing over to Lulham, who kept gaining through the middle of the field.
Then came Turn 8. Lulham went for a move down the inside, made contact with Luca Stolz’s Mercedes, and sent it spinning. Stewards handed down a drive-through penalty that erased the team’s realistic shot at victory in one stroke. Lulham served the penalty himself before climbing out and handing the car to Verstappen for the closing stretch.
One Corner, One Penalty, One Result Gone
Verstappen rejoined the race in 24th place with 45 minutes on the clock, a brutal starting point for any closing stint, let alone one meant to salvage a result that had looked like a win just laps earlier. He drove it back to ninth by the finish, a recovery that said plenty about why teams want him behind the wheel for the final push. He did not pretend the penalty was unfair either. The penalty was “deserved” for his team, he said afterward, a blunt line that drew a clear boundary: the mistake was real, and the abuse that followed it was not something Lulham had earned by making it.
Why a Grand Prix Winner Spends His Weekends Off Racing GT3
Verstappen Racing is Verstappen’s own team, and GT3 competition is where he spends the gaps between Formula 1’s triple headers, a habit that long predates owning the operation himself. Portimao fell in one of those windows, a chance to race for reasons that have nothing to do with championship points or Red Bull’s season. It is a smaller stage than the one he fills every other weekend, which made what happened to his teammate after the checkered flag land even harder to ignore.
Standing Up for a Teammate Instead of Just a Driver
The abuse aimed at Lulham followed a familiar pattern: a single mistake, replayed endlessly online, turned into a verdict on his character rather than a moment in a long race. An Instagram post from endurance.media got ahead of Verstappen’s own words, condemning the pile-on directly. “Personal abuse is never justified,” it read. “One incident does not define a driver’s ability, achievements or character.” Verstappen was one of thousands who liked that post before adding his own statement on top of it.
Verstappen has spent a decade absorbing criticism of his own, some of it fair and plenty of it not. That history makes him an unusually credible voice on the subject, and on a weekend that was supposed to be about his own GT3 program, he spent his loudest moment defending a teammate most of his audience had never heard of before Turn 8 at Portimao.
A Habit Bigger Than One Weekend
This was not a one-off appearance for Verstappen. He has spent years racing other disciplines in the gaps Formula 1 leaves open, from sim racing to GT3 outings, long before he put his own name on a team entry list. The habit comes from the same place his critics and his admirers both point to: a driver who prefers being behind a wheel to almost anything else, including rest, in one of the few open weekends on his calendar. Running his own GT3 program gave that habit a structure, a roster, and now, after Portimao, a teammate young enough that Verstappen’s own fame dwarfs his.
Verstappen is also no stranger to being on the receiving end of online criticism himself, some of it tied to his results and plenty of it tied to his conduct away from Formula 1 entirely. That history is part of what made his statement land the way it did. A driver who has absorbed plenty of noise about his own choices chose to spend his platform defending someone else’s mistake instead of explaining away his own weekend.
The Broader Problem of Fans Abusing Young Drivers
Lulham’s situation is not unique to one team or one series. Motorsport’s online audience has grown faster than its culture around criticism, and a single contact at Turn 8 can now reach a driver’s inbox within minutes, stripped of context and amplified well past its actual significance in a three hour race. Young drivers stepping up from junior categories, whether from esports like Lulham or from traditional karting ladders, often have the smallest public profile and the least experience managing that kind of attention, which makes them the easiest targets precisely when they can least afford the distraction.
Verstappen’s statement will not fix that culture on its own. It does put one of the sport’s biggest names clearly on record saying the quiet part out loud: a mistake on track is a racing incident, not a referendum on whether someone deserves to be there at all.
A Rookie’s First Real Test Under Pressure
For Lulham, Portimao was always going to be a measuring stick. Dominating a one-make series like the Radical Cup UK proves raw speed. A three hour GT3 enduro against professional drivers in changing conditions proves something else entirely, decision-making under fatigue, respect for cars that are not as forgiving as a spec Radical, and the discipline to know which gaps are real and which only look real at 150 miles an hour. He passed most of that test before Turn 8 ever arrived, climbing a struggling car into contention through traffic most rookies would have sat behind. The contact erased the headline result. It did not erase the stint that got the car there in the first place.
Verstappen Racing will take plenty more lessons out of Portimao than this one. The team learned about pace, strategy, and where Lulham still needs reps before his next outing. Verstappen made sure the lesson that reached the widest audience was not about any of that. It was about how a team, and a sport, treats a young driver after the worst lap of his young career.
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