Max Verstappen just completed the most ludicrous overtaking masterclass in motorsport history, carving through 100 drivers in just 35 minutes of breathtaking brilliance during Red Bull’s Max vs 100 – the largest go-kart race ever staged.

Starting dead last in 101st position on a specially constructed grid at Silverstone on Wednesday evening, the four-time Formula One world champion cleared the entire field by lap 14 of 30, completing the task with over half the race still to run and leaving a global audience utterly gobsmacked.

One hundred drivers. Thirty-five minutes. Job done. Welcome to the Verstappen Show.

This wasn’t some carefully curated procession against club racers. Verstappen’s opponents included Red Bull athletes, professional gamers, content creators, motorsport journalists and competition winners from around the world, most of whom had driven the specially designed Silverstone kart circuit only twice before: once in Tuesday’s practice and once in Wednesday’s qualifying session.

But none of that mattered when the lights went out. What followed was 35 minutes of pure, unfiltered chaos that had Verstappen on the radio declaring “I have no idea what’s going on, it’s carnage” before systematically dismantling the entire field with surgical precision.

First lap armageddon

The scale of the spectacle was evident from the moment the grid formed up. Aerial footage showed 101 karts stretched back along the Silverstone asphalt in seemingly endless rows, with Verstappen’s distinctive helmet visible in the very last position. It looked impossible. It proved to be anything but.

The opening lap decided half the race. At the hairpin, the field folded in on itself, karts colliding, spinning, facing the wrong way, the whole beautiful disaster captured in glorious high definition.

Two minutes in, he was 37th. Sixty-three drivers, had been eliminated without completing a lap, falling foul of the unique elimination rules that saw them knocked out the moment the rear of Verstappen’s kart drew level with the front of theirs.

When race control relayed the carnage statistics to him, the reply came back dripping with understated satisfaction: “Not a bad first lap then!”

The chase begins

By lap seven, the race had settled into a relentless pursuit. Pole-sitter Jacky Martens, YouTuber Zac Alsop and Red Bull Ford Powertrains technician Lewis Osler had built a lead of around 12 seconds whilst the chaos unfolded behind them, but Verstappen was carving three seconds a lap out of their advantage.

The onboard microphones captured the field coming to terms with their inevitable fate one by one. Motorsport YouTuber Paky TWC, running sixth at the time, could be heard desperately asking Verstappen over the radio not to overtake him on lap seven.

He was passed shortly afterwards. Of course he was.

The final three

With 54 minutes still on the clock, the Race Director handed the leading trio an extra fast lap shortcut. Martens, Alsop and Osler used their advantage together on lap 12, then abandoned racing each other for the lead and switched to defensive driving, knowing the inevitable was coming.

It bought them precisely one lap.

On lap 13, Verstappen arrived like a freight train. He cleared Alsop and Osler in one sweeping move through a single corner, the sort of audacious double overtake that would have triggered a standing ovation in Formula One, then dispatched Martens to complete the job with 35 minutes still remaining on the clock.

One hundred drivers. Fourteen laps. Thirty-five minutes. Obliterated.

The Numbers don’t lie

Verstappen’s fastest lap of 2m 20.673s was a staggering 2.6 seconds quicker than the next best time – Martens’s 2m 23.327s. In karting terms, that’s an eternity. Across the full 35 minutes, Verstappen passed a driver every 21 seconds on average.

“When I went to the grid and I saw where I had to start, with 100 karts in front of me, I was a little bit worried,” Verstappen admitted afterwards, in what might be the understatement of the year.

“After my first lap, with all the carnage, I did think ‘Okay, we have got this under control!’ It started to become really fun and once I started getting into a rhythm, was able to overtake them one-by-one and saw the gap closing, that was really exciting.”

Back to basics

For Verstappen, who began his racing journey in karts as a child, the event represented a return to his roots, albeit with 100 more competitors than he was used to.

“It was great to just be back in a go-kart again and go back to basics,” he said. “It reminded me of racing back in the day. It’s a really beautiful track and well designed, and it was a nice touch to be able to get all the data fed through the radio too. I had a great day and it was good to come out with the win!”

Good to come out with the win. Mate, you passed 100 drivers in half an hour. That’s not a win – that’s a demolition.