At the end of Red Bull’s triumphant weekend in Suzuka, Christian Horner celebrated Max Verstappen’s incredible performance. At the same time, the Red Bull team principal paid tribute to the work done by the team’s engineers after the disastrous feedback collected during Friday’s two free practice sessions. “We literally turned the car upside down,” Horner commented—a major effort that started in the late Japanese afternoon and ended during the middle of the night in Milton Keynes. The simulator work turned out to be crucial, and there’s a curious backstory about the person who spent hours testing the setup changes in the virtual world.
For two seasons now, Red Bull has included Rudy Van Buren among the group of drivers who rotate through the simulator—an almost unknown name among those who follow Red Bull’s usual pool of young talents working at Milton Keynes.
The “unknown” doesn’t appear in any junior categories and, officially born in 1992, his profile sparked even more curiosity regarding the driver who gave the final approval for the setup that was then brought to Verstappen’s and Tsunoda’s cars on Saturday morning.
Dutch, 33 years old, Van Buren had a stint in karting that didn’t lead to major opportunities, so from 2007 he plunged into the world of virtual racing. A pioneer in the field, he grew year by year until becoming one of the global benchmarks in a sector that has experienced (and continues to experience) massive growth worldwide.
A few years ago, Van Buren joined Team Redline, Max Verstappen’s e-sports team. On weekends when Max competes in virtual endurance races on iRacing, Rudy is one of his teammates. Max Verstappen was also one of those who pushed for Van Buren’s candidacy for the simulator driver role at Red Bull, both for software development and setup work during race weekends.
“Rudy, like some other drivers from the sim world, has incredible sensitivity, from the tiniest adjustments to the most extreme ones,” Max Verstappen said last year. “He tests pretty much everything. Even when I go to the simulator for some sessions, Rudy does the prep work, and I must say everything is already pretty much dialed in—I can just focus on the details.” Max’s trust in his fellow Dutchman and teammate is total.
Van Buren has won several world esports championships and even triumphed in a McLaren-organized competition (with a real F1 simulator session as the prize), which saw 30,000 candidates take part. His fame in virtual racing also earned him invitations to compete in real-world events like the 2018 Race of Champions, the Porsche Carrera Cup Deutschland, and the Porsche Supercup.
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