Thanks to Verstappen, GT racing is firmly in the spotlight: ‘Sometimes more fun than F1’

It was just under two years ago that Nicky Catsburg told GPblog he had seen enough of the World Endurance Championship (WEC). His future lay in the American IMSA, he said at the time. So when the Dutchman sits down for a chat in Corvette’s ultra-modern WEC hospitality — shared with Cadillac — he laughs hard: “Yes, here we are again! It’s funny, because when I’m racing IMSA, I miss WEC. When I’m in WEC, you miss IMSA. So this year we’re just doing both.”

For Catsburg, taking part in the 2026 WEC season is a bonus. The title, for instance, is out of reach because he’ll miss the race in Brazil. It clashes with an IMSA event, and that takes priority. A pity, but nothing more than that, because both IMSA and WEC are top championships. When asked to compare the two series, Catsburg pauses for a moment.

Catsburg never raced in Formula 1 himself, but these days he’s closely associated with it. That’s due to his appearances as an analyst on Ziggo Sport, where he regularly joins the panel. “No, I haven’t become a famous Dutchman, thankfully,” Catsburg says about that. “That’s not something I aspire to or anything. You do notice it a bit, but luckily not much. In the past I traveled a lot with Tom Coronel. He gets stopped everywhere. I don’t have that at all.”

What isn’t yet, may still come, especially if Catsburg continues to grow in the TV world. “I enjoy doing TV. I like talking about motorsport. If you came to eat with our GT team here, we’d be talking only about motorsport. And I also think it’s important that I learn this craft, that I get better at it. At some point I might not be so good at racing anymore, and I’ll have to do something else,” the Corvette driver says about his future.

That’s all for the future; for now his main task is to tear around circuits as fast as possible in a GT car. His branch of motorsport is growing, thanks to Verstappen: “I also hope that at my Dutch channel we’ll be able to talk more about GTs soon, not just about Formula 1.”

The downside is that GT races — like in the WEC — could tucked away on smaller channels. “It just lacks a certain fanbase. And the more we talk about it on TV, the more often Max Verstappen takes part and those kinds of things happen. People will start to recognize it.

“It doesn’t matter where you mention the name Formula 1, everyone knows it. But there are also people who say: ‘You do WEC? What’s that?’ They have no idea. They just don’t know this. The fact that Max is now taking part means it reaches a broader audience. And then people realize: hey, that type of racing is actually super fun. Maybe it’s even more fun sometimes. This is really awesome to watch,” Catsburg concludes.