F1 News
Sunday wasn't the first time Verstappen and Leclerc went wheel to wheel
Last weekend we saw two of the most exciting young driver's race wheel to wheel with each other as they battled it out for the race win at the Austrian Grand Prix. Max Verstappen and Charles Leclerc have been racing each other for a large part of their racing careers and it looks like they will continue to battle it out in FOrmula 1 in the years to come.
In Will Buxton's article for the Official F1 Website, it was discovered that Verstappen and Leclerc have been racing aggressively with each other since their karting days.
"Two young chargers go wheel to wheel," Buxton wrote. "The door left slightly open, a lunge up the inside and… you know how this one goes. Contact.
"But this isn’t the 2019 Austrian Grand Prix. No. This is the 2011 KF3 World Cup, junior karting’s blue riband event. And it was Verstappen who had good reason to feel aggrieved that day, the contact from his Monegasque rival ultimately forcing him not only out of the battle for the lead but out of the race.
"Sunday wasn’t the first time these two had come together. It wasn’t the first time they went wheel to wheel.
"I’d wager it won’t be the last, either."
It is interesting to learn that the two drivers grew up racing each other and that in fact so many from that year of KF3 have made it into Formula 1.
"While we focus on the two who fought for victory on Sunday, we should perhaps go back to that first altercation nearly a decade ago. Because in that World Cup field were not only Verstappen and Leclerc, but Alex Albon, Pierre Gasly and Esteban Ocon. A year later, Lance Stroll and George Russell would be in that KF3 field, too.
One could say we got a little snapshot of the future at the Red Bull Ring at the weekend. What’s glorious to me is that it isn’t. The future is now."