Team Redline celebrates 25 years. Atze Kerkhof: 'Max is an amazing role model'
Published on 01 May 2025 by Florence Cobben
Team Redline, the sim racing branch of Verstappen.com Racing, is celebrating it’s 25th anniversary. Over the years Team Redline has fought it’s way to the top of the competitive esports racing world and now boasts an impressive list of titles to it’s name. Max Verstappen, who is closely involved with Team Redline and occasionally competes in sim racing, has placed his trust in Atze Kerkhof to lead Verstappen.com’s sim racing team.
This is part 1 of a three-part series transcribing a special interview Verstappen.com had with Atze. Part 1 discusses the history of Team Redline and Max’s role in it.
If we go back 25 years, to the genesis of Team Redline, we end up with a small team, a group of friends. Sim racing was just finding it’s feet when Dom Duhan started Team Redline with a couple of drivers in, at that time, relatively small competitions. But it was promising from the start. Atze explains how he was initiated into the team: “Throughout the years sim racing has grown, and that’s how I joined Team Redline in 2011. Team Redline has always had the status of being one of the best teams on the grid, with a lot of prestige. It’s always been an attractive team for drivers to join. The same was true for me back then.”
“If you really want to be the best, you have to put in the work,” Atze explains, who puts his money where his mouth is. “We kept growing Team Redline and I took on more and more of a management role. Our first big step was about three years after Max joined the team. We decided to switch gears and professionalize to ‘Team Redline 2.0’.”
The Team moved into offices and pursued professionalization in earnest. Riding on the momentum, new drivers were onboarded, pushing the Team to the top of the rankings. “That is of course the most important and the guiding principle of how fun anything can be. If we’re not winning, we’re not relevant. So, our focus was: we had to be professional, but above all we had to win. It doesn’t matter what happens, as long as we’re winning. We stayed true to that principle. In the running of the team, everything revolves around results, and we built from that. That’s brought us to where we are now.”
The equipment built for sim racing has developed rapidly over the years as well, as Atze points out: “We now have very professional rigs and amazing steering wheels. Back in the day, it was a standard ‘cheap’ steering wheel with plastic pedals and there was no force feedback. It was a completely different time. In terms of hardware there has been an evolution, and big steps are being made. It makes sim racing more important to regular drivers as well.”
But it’s not just the hardware that has taken a leap forward: “In terms of the graphics, it looks much better now. But actually the software back in the day was also quite good, and the competitions back were very good. It’s in many ways the same, but it’s busier since there are so many more active sim racers. Sim racing has grown enormously, and in the Netherlands that’s in large part thanks to Max. It's also expanded to professional drivers, who use sim racing to train at home. Everything is ballooning, including prize money. Sim racers can live off of that money, and sponsors and partners are noticing. These days, there’s a whole market behind the esport, and that makes it commercially very exciting; back in the day, it was more of a hobby, a cool game you play on your computer. In that sense a lot has changed."
Atze worked with Max since his first laps in Formula 3. A huge simulator was built at Van Amersfoort Racing, and there Atze helped and challenged driver to set their best times in the sim. “Max always liked that. Even after he was promoted to Formula 1, we kept training and sim racing against one another”, Atze reminisces. “At a certain point, we told him ‘if you like it so much, then join Team Redline’. There we had a controlled, relatively professional environment where Max could pursue his hobby against some of the best drivers in the world. Gradually this has become more and more serious. In the beginning it was still touch-and-go, until the light bulb went on and Max really started focusing on sim racing. This went hand-in-hand with winning Formula 1 world titles. Those things are interwined, and still are.”
Atze knows Max well: “Max always has had a very clear vision and ideas and that’s nice; he knows what is needed to perform well. In sim racing you have drivers who don’t really know what to do to succeed, or what a top sport really requires. Max knows how hard you have to work and has always done the most to succeed. When he has time, he works the hardest out of anyone in Team Redline. He’s an amazing role model. Max is also the fastest of them all when he can go for it. That gives the rest of the team something to aspire to. Max is always very clear, very straightforward. As he is in tv-interviews, so he is also in daily life. That works well.”
Max, who has pursued his ambassador-role at Team Redline to the fullest, reflects on some beautiful moments: “For me personally, I think (the best memory was) joining the team in late 2014-beginning 2015 and getting to know everyone in the team. I did some really cool practice sessions, that even have been highlighted in the real world.” Regarding the team’s next steps, Max also has some thoughts: “The team is constantly growing and becoming better and even more professional. It’s becoming a stepping stone into the real world, and is being taken seriously by real organisations. And besides all that, there is the team success that we have achieved in all those years. It’s by far the most successful racing esports team out there.”
A fine compliment to the current Team Redline and all those involved in the venture over it’s 25 years run. In part 2, posted this Friday, Atze will share more insights – reflections on the Team’s reputation and internal composition, how to make a career in sim racing, securing partnerships, and more.
The final part of the series will be posted on Saturday, where Atze will elaborate on simulators for professional drivers, how to make the move from virtual to real racing, and the opportunities and future of Team Redline.
