Max tries his luck on the grass and the ice
Published on 06 July 2017 by Niels Hendrix
Red Bull Racing drivers Max Verstappen and Daniel Ricciardo teamed up with team principal Christian Horner up and hit the ice at the Red Bull Akademie in Salzburg – a development centre for ice hockey and soccer stars as well as being the frozen training ground of pro Ice hockey squad EC Red Bull Salzburg and football team FC Salzburg.
With the formalities over it was time for the main event – a proper match, with the media split into two squads, each led by a driver, and with Christian pressed into service as the referee.
We'd like to say it was a closely matched, hard-fought contest, full of stout defending and attacking verve and flair but that would be a massive, steaming lie. In truth it was organised chaos with bodies everywhere, a huge number of undignified falls, a couple of handbags at ten places fights and a lot of rather fruity swearing.
Still, there had to be a winning squad and, despite Max being actually pretty handy on a pair of skates, it was the motley crew led by Daniel Ricciardo that emerged 2-1 winners. Max was confident in his abilities on the ice, despite finishing second best on the day.
“I'm not going to rate myself – but it's OK. Above average, I guess”, Max smiled. “It's been a great activity, actually. I think as a Dutch guy it's always good to be on the ice, so I definitely enjoyed it. I was playing a bit when I was ten years old, played it for a few months.”
And from the ref's viewpoint, is there any danger that you might lose either of your drivers to the bright lights of the NHL? “Max is a bit of a hidden talent on ice skates – obviously it wasn't his first time today”, said Christian Horner. “I think Max is a natural: he's obviously done it before. Daniel was a little bit like Bambi on Ice. But Australians in a fridge doesn't really work. They had a lot of fun and kept it pretty clean and they're still in one piece – which is the main thing. It was great to see the two drivers out there having a bit of fun and being able to visit this amazing facility.”
“As for the refereeing – you know what? I've never even watched a game of ice hockey in its entirety! I don't know the rules and I was making most of it up as I went along – but good to see the guys having quite a lot of fun out there.”
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