Siddhant “Shreeman Legend” Joshi speaks to TalkEsport about racing Max Verstappen at Silverstone, experiencing the four-time Formula One world champion’s racecraft from the same circuit and finishing as the highest-placed Indian at Red Bull’s Max vs 100.
Watching Max Verstappen work his way through a Formula One field offers one understanding of his ability, but sharing a circuit with him, watching the gaps disappear in real time and discovering just how quickly an opportunity becomes an overtake provides another perspective entirely.
That was the perspective Siddhant “Shreeman Legend” Joshi carried with him when I caught up with him after Red Bull’s Max vs 100 at Silverstone, where three of India’s best-known gaming personalities had traded their familiar competitive surroundings for racing helmets, karts and the rather unusual challenge of trying to stay ahead of a four-time Formula One world champion.
Shreeman finished 32nd overall, ahead of Jonathan Gaming in 36th and Techno Gamerz in 39th, making him the highest-finishing Indian among the 101 drivers who took part. It was a result that gave him some understandable bragging rights, although the finishing position was not what interested me most when we spoke after the event.
What Shreeman had just experienced was something television, telemetry and lap times cannot entirely reproduce. He had watched Verstappen attack the same corners, negotiate the same traffic and make decisions on the same stretch of asphalt that he was attempting to navigate himself, offering him an unusually close view of the instincts and reactions that separate an elite racing driver from almost everyone around him.
Red Bull designed Max vs 100 around precisely that contrast. Verstappen began behind 100 challengers drawn from gaming, sport, entertainment and creator culture, with the task of hunting them down across the circuit. According to Red Bull’s official Max vs 100 classification, Shreeman’s P32 eventually placed him ahead of India’s other two representatives and more than two-thirds of the original field.
For someone whose career was built in gaming rather than professional motorsport, however, the more compelling takeaway was not simply how long he remained ahead of Verstappen, but what those laps revealed about the way one of Formula One’s defining drivers reads a race.
What Max Verstappen looks like when you are actually racing him
Q: We normally judge Max through lap times, race victories and what we see on television. Having now shared a circuit with him, what stood out to you most about the way he drives?
Shreeman’s assessment centred on something that statistics struggle to communicate adequately: Verstappen’s reactions and the speed with which he appeared to process everything developing around him.
Max vs 100 presented a particularly unusual test of that ability because Verstappen was not navigating a conventional field of professional racing drivers whose behaviour could be anticipated through years of experience at the same level. He was working through a crowded circuit containing competitors with dramatically different levels of karting and racing experience, meaning every encounter required him to assess the situation, recognise the available space and decide almost immediately whether an overtake was possible.
From Shreeman’s position inside that same contest, the distinction became apparent very quickly. Verstappen was obviously faster, but outright speed alone was not what impressed him; it was how little time seemed to exist between the world champion recognising an opening and committing to it.
Racing Max is very different from watching Max
Q: Did actually racing against him change your understanding of the difference between somebody who can drive quickly and somebody operating at Formula One world-champion level?
That distinction formed much of the fascination surrounding Max vs 100. The field contained competitive personalities and several challengers with racing experience, but almost nobody could reasonably be expected to possess anything approaching Verstappen’s lifetime of professional preparation. Putting everybody on the same circuit transformed an abstract difference in ability into something the participants could experience for themselves.
Inside the kart, there was no television director deciding which battle Shreeman would see, nor was there a timing screen reducing the performance difference to tenths of a second. Instead, he could watch Verstappen arrive behind traffic, understand the situation unfolding ahead of him and find a route through it before the opportunity disappeared.
For Shreeman, that proximity offered an appreciation of elite racecraft that would have been difficult to acquire through a simulator or television broadcast. Max vs 100 was conceived as an entertainment spectacle, but for those actually sitting in the karts, it also became an unusually direct demonstration of what years of elite motorsport experience look like when applied in real time.
Shreeman Legend finishes as the highest-placed Indian
Q: You finished 32nd and ended Max vs 100 as the highest-placed Indian, ahead of Jonathan and Ujjwal. How satisfying was that result once you realised where you had finished?
The final classification gave Shreeman a result worth remembering, with all three Indian representatives finishing inside the top 40 and his 32nd-place finish putting him at the front of that group. Jonathan Gaming followed in 36th, while Techno Gamerz finished 39th.
There is an obvious temptation to interpret P32 as one would the finishing order of a conventional motor race, although Max vs 100 operated very differently. The challengers arrived with varying levels of karting experience, while the format was fundamentally built around surviving Verstappen’s pursuit rather than competing against one another over a traditional race distance.
The scale of Verstappen’s pursuit helps put the classification into perspective. Red Bull’s official account of the race records that Verstappen started from P101 and worked through the entire 100-driver field in 14 laps and approximately 35 minutes, making every additional position survived by the challengers increasingly difficult to hold.
Even with the unusual format taken into account, the result remains a useful marker of Shreeman’s afternoon at Silverstone. Among the three Indian gaming personalities invited to participate, he remained in the contest longer than his compatriots and ultimately finished ahead of more than two-thirds of the original field.
Three Indian gaming creators found themselves racing at Silverstone
Q: You, Jonathan and Ujjwal came here primarily from India’s gaming ecosystem, and suddenly the three of you were racing at Silverstone against Max Verstappen. Did you have a moment where you realised just how unusual that was?
The circumstances surrounding India’s presence at Max vs 100 tell a broader story than the finishing order alone. Shreeman, Jonathan and Ujjwal did not reach Silverstone through the conventional motorsport ladder, yet their careers in gaming had carried all three into an event at one of the world’s most recognisable racing venues, sharing a grid built around one of the most successful Formula One drivers of his generation.
Indian gaming has changed substantially over the course of their careers, developing from a comparatively self-contained online community into an entertainment ecosystem that increasingly overlaps with mainstream sport, global brands and international creator culture. Three Indian gaming personalities putting on racing helmets at Silverstone and lining up against Verstappen illustrated that evolution rather more effectively than any industry presentation could have done.
Ujjwal’s experience offered a particularly interesting counterpart to Shreeman’s because the two arrived at Silverstone with their own expectations of what racing Verstappen would involve. In a separate conversation with TalkEsport, Techno Gamerz reflected on racing Verstappen at Max vs 100 and what the experience revealed once the competition moved from anticipation to the circuit itself.
The final classification added another satisfying dimension to India’s presence, with Shreeman finishing 32nd, Jonathan 36th and Ujjwal 39th, placing all three Indian representatives inside the top 40 of an international field assembled from gaming, sport and entertainment.
An education in racecraft that a finishing position cannot explain
Q: When you look back at Max vs 100 after the adrenaline has settled, what do you think you will remember most from the experience?
The result will inevitably remain part of Shreeman’s memory of Silverstone, particularly because he left as the highest-finishing Indian, but the lasting value of an event such as Max vs 100 extends well beyond a number on the classification. A results sheet can establish that Shreeman finished 32nd; it cannot adequately describe what it feels like to sit inside a kart and watch Max Verstappen solve the same traffic, corners and racing situations that you are attempting to understand yourself.
That was ultimately what made the encounter so revealing. Shreeman did not require telemetry, an onboard comparison or a detailed analysis of Verstappen’s lap times to understand the difference between somebody capable of driving quickly and somebody who has spent much of his life competing at the highest level of motorsport. For a brief period at Silverstone, he was able to observe that difference from within the same race, where every closing gap and rapidly executed overtake made Verstappen’s racecraft considerably more tangible than it could ever appear on a television screen.
There is also a wider significance to the experience for Indian gaming. Shreeman, Jonathan and Ujjwal travelled to Silverstone because careers built largely within video games had expanded into opportunities that would once have appeared far removed from the Indian gaming ecosystem, and their presence alongside Verstappen demonstrated just how porous the boundaries between gaming, traditional sport and creator culture have become.
Shreeman can therefore leave Silverstone with the satisfaction of having finished ahead of India’s contingent, but P32 is unlikely to be the part of Max vs 100 that remains clearest years from now. The more enduring memory will probably be the rare opportunity to watch one of Formula One’s finest drivers operate from only a few metres away, not from behind a television screen or through a simulator, but while attempting to negotiate the very same race himself.
