Cruising Into the Monaco Grand Prix With Max Verstappen

Reported by Vogue.

Four days before the 2026 Monaco Grand Prix, superyachts are already jamming the principality's harbor and street-legal Bugattis are threading the famous hairpin at Fairmont Monte Carlo. The spectacle is peak Formula 1 excess — and Max Verstappen, seated inside Le Méridien before heading out for a TAG Heuer shoot on the water, is exactly as unimpressed as you'd expect. "Monaco is built around the F1 track, in a way," he says. "You can see them if you know where to look." According to Vogue, the 28-year-old Red Bull icon — four-time Drivers' World Champion, record-holder for most Grand Prix wins in a single season (19) and consecutively (10, both in 2023) — has always brought this same blunt clarity to everything.

What's surprised people lately is what that clarity extends to off the track: his daughter Lily, a year old, banging pots and pans around his Monaco flat while the dogs and cats circle. His partner, model Kelly Piquet, has a six-year-old daughter, Penelope, who eased Verstappen into parenthood early. "When I had my own child, it was not really a shock," he says. Now, family time — no cameras, no content, no itinerary — is the actual goal. He has 15 million social media followers and, refreshingly, does not care. "What I care about is that I'm winning on the track and winning in life — privately."

The Geek Behind the Wheel

The other thing the paddock meme of Verstappen-as-blunt-instrument misses: the man is genuinely curious. He's as engaged by AI's impact on engineering analytics as he is by race strategy. He's building a GT3 team because he wants to, and wants to win at it — "I don't want to just participate." He's tracking computing power developments with something close to delight. "You need to be a little bit of a geek for these kinds of things," he says. "But I like it."

Less delightful to him: Formula 1's 2026 energy-management regulations, which mandate a 50/50 split between combustion and electrical power. After Shanghai, Verstappen called it "playing Mario Kart." Sitting on the boat today, he hasn't softened. "It's not pure," he says. "Not everything needs to be super complex just for complexity's sake." Retirement speculation has followed his dissatisfaction like a wake, though he mentions no plans — only that a championship remains on the table (he lost 2025 to Lando Norris by two points) and that he's genuinely passionate enough about racing that leaving it doesn't seem imminent.

When the boat hits a sizable chop, Verstappen doesn't flinch — his own 33-meter superyacht, Unleash the Lion, is docked nearby — and as the TAG Heuer Monaco catches the afternoon light on his wrist, the portrait that emerges is less celebrity athlete, more someone who has figured out, remarkably early, what actually matters to him.

In a sport built on spectacle, Verstappen's most radical move is his indifference to it.

Read the original at Vogue.