Max Verstappen Wins the Dutch Grand Prix But Car Hat Guy Stole the Show This Weekend

Max Verstappen won today's Dutch Grand Prix, his home race, wire to wire. He didn't put a foot wrong all day in his Red Bull car and cruised to a relatively easy victory over Sir Lewis Hamilton and Valtteri Bottas for Mercedes. Verstappen jumps into the lead in the Driver's Championship over Hamilton thirteen races into the season. Only three points separate the two drivers with nine races left in the season. This season is one of the best championship battles we've seen in years, today was another chapter in that story.

Mercedes still holds the lead in the Constructor Championship over Red Bull with both drivers finishing on the podium behind Verstappen. Red Bull's second driver, Sergio Perez, finished in eighth with an incredible recovery drive after starting in last place. Both championship battles are going to come down to the last few races of the season this year and it's going to be incredible to watch how it all plays out.

While there wasn't much action on the track today, the real action was in the grandstands where the Dutch fans were out in full force cheering on Verstappen. It was a non-stop party all weekend long, but there was one man who stole the show, car hat guy. 

I love this guy. This is dedication. What a move by this guy to show up to the Dutch Grand Prix with a massive car hat on. They briefly showed him on the broadcast yesterday and ever since then I haven't been able to stop thinking about it. I have so much respect for this move, but at the same time, I have so many questions that need to be answered about the car hat guy.

This clearly has to be homemade, right? You can't just go online and buy a massive, replica F1 car hat? This had to be a passion project he's been working on in the basement. Probably had a calendar on the wall with this weekend circled, feverishly working on it in his free time to get it ready for race day. Serious dedication, but I would love to hear more on the build process.

How long is the process for getting this thing on? You can see in the picture that it looks like he's wearing some sort of back brace support system to keep it stable. The back brace support is a pro-move. It's so big that he probably had to have his own pit crew for his car hat just to help him get it set up. Even with the device supporting it, this guy has to have the strongest neck of all time to have that thing on his head for an entire day.

He can't travel to the race with that thing on, right? I would love to see a Tim Robinson type sketch of him trying to convince his buddy who picked him up on how it's 100% possible for him to fit his car in the car. As funny as that would be, it's just not feasible, logistically, for him to put that thing on at home then travel to the race. So they had to do the setup in the parking lot before the race. I would have loved to be at that pre-race tailgate to see them figuring out the logistics.

What was the process for getting that thing through security? He clearly made it into the race, so that means the car hat cleared inspection at the front gate, but I'm guessing that they had to do a full search of the car. The chassis of a car hat would be the perfect place to hide contraband. But if you're that security person, are you going to hold up thousands of fans trying to enter the race so that you can do a full cavity search on a car hat? That's a tough call. I guess you could maybe speed up the process by having him shake his head to see if anything is banging around in there but at the same time any car hat-wearing guy worth their weight who's trying to smuggle in contraband would have already thought about this and taped everything down. I think they had to go with a full inspection, no way they can risk having car hat contraband get by on their watch.

So now the guy is in the race, he's living large. However, this is when the rubber meets the road for car hat guy. How does he sit in his seat?

Francisco Seco. Shutterstock Images.

The car hat is so big that it would be in the way of literally everyone around him. It looks like he sat in the last row of the stands, but he is still a liability out there at all times. If you're sitting around him in the danger zone, you have to at least make a few passive-aggressive comments to him like 'wow that thing is massive' or 'can't believe they let you in here with that thing' you can't just sit there and get smacked in the face by a car hat without saying something.

How does he even watch the race? Race cars are * checks notes * fast, so you spend your entire day at any race just turning your head back and forth as cars fly by your spot on the track. The only problem is that if the car hat guy turns his head, even slightly, he's putting everyone around him in danger. I guess, with great power comes great responsibility because your car hat has the potential to seriously injure people at any moment.

I have so many more questions about car hat guy that I'll probably never get answers to, but he stole the show this weekend. We need him to travel to every race of the season. Next weekend F1 heads to Monza in Italy, which is one of the best races of the year. Until then, I'll be sitting here thinking about car hat guy.