Most F1 drivers, we suspect, are spending their days probably reading Top Gear magazine or watching Homes under the Hammer as they wait for the delayed new season to start. A couple of the newbies however, are still racing each other… albeit online. And it’s glorious to watch and see.

Earlier this week both Red Bull’s Max Verstappen and McLaren’s Lando Norris raced in separate online races. Max in the ‘All-Star Esports Battle’ where he finished 11th against other real racing drivers and professional racing gamers. Lando did the ‘Not the AUS GP’ run by Veloce Esports where he finished sixth, after starting 19th and getting a penalty for stopping on the track for too long trying to do a practice start. Ledge.

But it wasn’t until they decided to race against each other on the online racing platform game iRacing (where you and I can join) where things got exciting. It was all streamed live on Lando’s Twitch account (where you can follow all his racing), the whole race available soon after on YouTube.

Things got a little spicy while racing for the lead at Daytona in their Porsche Supercup cars. Lando went for it but instead tapped Max, which resulted in wall-meet-Max, Max-meet-wall. Lando eventually won the race and Max climbed his way back up the field, showing us some of those trademark overtakes that he does in real life.

While the racing was great to watch - sometimes more exciting than the real thing - the best bit was seeing how Lando does it, via his POV. To watch his physical inputs and then type replies to comments, alongside commentating on the race and communicating to his team… he made everything look effortless. Yeah, probably why he’s an F1 driver.

Whoever said F1 wasn’t open enough needs to see him in action - he’ll be racing all week, so check out his Twitch account for more details.

Now, we’re off to google racing sims and pretend we’ll be able to keep up with the big boys…