- Max Verstappen uses up to 30% of his brain capacity, says Red Bull insider.
- Former mechanic Calum Nicholas spent 10 years watching Verstappen up close.
- Says whatever a rival is willing to do, Verstappen will always go one step further.
A former Red Bull mechanic who spent nearly a decade working alongside Max Verstappen says the four-time world champion operates on a cognitive level that most drivers simply cannot reach.
Calum Nicholas, the team’s former Senior Power Unit Assembly Technician, made the remarks in a recent interview with evo India.
Nicholas worked at Red Bull Racing for over 10 years. He was part of 233 grands prix, four drivers’ championships and two constructors’ titles.
He now serves as a Red Bull ambassador after stepping down from his role as a mechanic ahead of the 2025 season.
A mechanic’s front-row seat to greatness
Nicholas, who has more than 350,000 followers on Instagram under the handle @f1mech, watched Verstappen develop from an 18-year-old debutant into the sport’s most decorated active driver.
He was in the garage at the 2016 Spanish Grand Prix when Verstappen became Formula 1’s youngest race winner on his very first outing for Red Bull.
Verstappen held off veteran Kimi Raikkonen in the closing laps to take the win.
“I think one of the things that I say now about Max, it’s been a real privilege to see him come into the team in 2016,” Nicholas told evo India.
“Holding off a veteran Kimi Raikkonen for like 20 odd laps, it was clear, you know, from very early on, that he had this raw talent.”
The brain that works differently
Nicholas believes Verstappen’s mind functions differently from those of his rivals. He pointed to a popular idea that most people use only a small fraction of their brain’s capacity. He argued that Verstappen has somehow accessed far more of his.
“Max has somehow managed to unlock 25%, 30%,” Nicholas said. “It just seems like he has this spare capacity when he’s in the car, to look at other things, to see the whole race, to communicate back and forth with us.”
Most drivers are fully absorbed by the task of keeping a car on track at 300 km/h. Nicholas suggests Verstappen manages all of that and still has enough mental room left to read the broader race and relay precise feedback to his engineers.
The relentless pursuit of perfection
Nicholas says cognitive ability alone does not explain Verstappen’s dominance. His refusal to be satisfied, even after a comfortable victory, is what truly separates him.
“Max can win by 10 seconds; he’s asking himself why he didn’t win by 12, right?” Nicholas said. “He will never stop pushing himself. And I think that drive is probably what you’d say is his secret.”
That quality showed clearly during the 2025 season. Verstappen arrived at round 16 in Monza trailing the championship leader by 104 points.
He then won five of the next eight races following upgrades to the RB21, finishing the year with eight victories, more than any other driver, though he missed the title by just two points.
A competitor who always goes one step further
Nicholas also spoke about what makes Verstappen so difficult to beat in a straight fight. Whatever a rival is prepared to do to win, he said, Verstappen is prepared to go further.
“When you’re competing against Max, whatever you’re willing to do to win, he’s willing to go that step further than you,” Nicholas said. “That’s one of the things that makes him so great.”
Former F1 driver Eddie Irvine has described Verstappen as “by far the most dominant team leader on the grid.” He noted that none of his teammates have come close to matching him across his career.
Verstappen carries 71 grand prix victories and four consecutive world championships, spanning 2021 to 2024, into the 2026 season. He races with the number 3 on his car this year.
Nicholas’s account adds to a long line of testimony from people inside the sport who believe they have witnessed something genuinely rare: a driver who combines an exceptional mind with an appetite for improvement that has no obvious ceiling.
