European Formula 3 driver Max Verstappen has become a member of Red Bull’s junior driver programme, the energy drinks company confirmed.
The highly-regarded 16-year-old, whose family has previous history in Formula 1 with father Jos racing for various teams including the Red Bull F1 team’s previous incarnation Minardi, was known to be of high interest to both Mercedes and Red Bull for their driver programmes.
Verstappen’s representatives had discussions with Toto Wolff and Helmut Marko for the respective teams before and had offers on the table from both parties to consider. Ultimately, Verstappen elected to sign for Red Bull, with the latter to begin offering the support of their new protégé in the upcoming F3 round at the Nurburgring.
“We are very pleased to announce that Max Verstappen has accepted our invitation to join the Red Bull Junior Team,” read a Red Bull statement on their website.
“This is effective immediately and the 16-year-old will continue his Formula 3 campaign at the Nurburgring this weekend as a Red Bull Junior.”
It was also confirmed by the Austrian company that Verstappen, who is currently 2nd in the European F3 championship, will race in the annual Macau Grand Prix taking place in November.
Verstappen joins a junior driver line-up consisting of Formula Renault 3.5 series and GP3 series championship leaders Carlos Sainz Jr. and Alex Lynn, while he’ll be looking to follow in the footsteps of graduates Sebastian Vettel, Daniel Ricciardo, Jean-Eric Vergne and Daniil Kvyat into F1 in the future.
