That time the trio Max-Jos Verstappen and Raymond Vermeulen ‘ran out of budget’ in Brazil in 2014

Money ‘counted’ Max Verstappen is in all likelihood currently the highest paid driver on the starting grid (head to head is with Lewis Hamilton also considering personal sponsorships), but even the Dutchman had to be a bit careful in his spending at the beginning of his career. Max Verstappen’s manager, Raymond Vermeulen, reached by the magazine Formule 1, told a funny anecdote dating back to 2014, the only single-seater season – in the European F3 championship – of the then 17-year-old Verstappen before his F1 debut in 2015 with Toro Rosso. Max Verstappen had reached an agreement with Toro Rosso to hold three Friday free practice sessions in Japan, the United States and finally Brazil. At Interlagos the trio formed by Max-Jos Verstappen and manager Vermeulen showed up with money counted. “We had a budget of zero, and for this reason we only took one hotel room for the three of us at the Hotel Transamerica in São Paulo – Vermeulen’s words – a cot, a sort of cot, had been set up for Max. It was at the foot of the bed and naturally that Thursday he went to sleep on time, while Jos and I went out for a drink. We returned to the room a little later and perhaps made a little too much noise. Max woke up and complained because he had to tomorrow driving and Jos told him not to whine that everything would be fine. We will never forget all those episodes, we depended on each other and we had a lot of fun.”