Kelly Piquet Says Her Age Gap With Max Verstappen Doesn’t Affect Their Relationship

F1 driver Max Verstappen is one of the most accomplished and highest-earning Formula 1 drivers in recent years. And it's a career that started when he was just a child, where he took home first place in several karting championships. Verstappen's dedication to his craft continued to shine. And from 2021 throughout 2024, he secured four consecutive Formula One World Drivers' Championship wins, among numerous other distinctions.

Being such a high-profile athlete comes with a lot of scrutiny, inevitably leaving fans wanting to know more about Verstappen's personal life. One topic that's been coming up online is the age gap between the driver and his girlfriend, Kelly Piquet.

Racing News 365 reports that the two have been together since October of 2020, and on Dec. 6, 2024, the pair announced they were having a child. Accompanying headlines of the happy news were also discussions surrounding the ages Max and Kelly were when they began dating.

Verstappen was born on Sept. 30, 1997, and Piquet on Dec. 7, 1988, and they first met when Max was 19 years old. Distractify previously reported on the couple's relationship timeline, noting that they each come from racing enthusiast families.

Although they didn't start officially dating until Max was 23, Kelly told Vogue magazine that their first encounter was "magical." The Brazilian-Dutch model, however, would go on to date another F1 driver, Daniil Kvyat in 2017, with whom she had a daughter. Kvyat and Piquet would part ways in 2019, and a year later, she began dating Max.

In her December 2022 interview with Vogue Netherlands, Piquet addressed the difference in age between her and Max. She says that this doesn't really factor into their relationship at all, while also noting how sweet the driver is to her daughter from her other marriage.

Folks have also taken to social media to address a previous relationship of Max Verstappen's, where there was also an age gap. An X user who goes by MJ claims Swedish Race Car Driver Mikaela Ahlin-Kottulinsky claims the two were a pair when Max was 16 years old.

"Want to talk about grooming. Let me introduce you, the OG because people don't know her ... Mikaela Kottlunsky Max's girlfriend ... they started dating when he was 16 (or less) and she was something like 22," the social media user penned.

Just Jared reports that Max and Mikaela dated in 2015, which would put Max at 18 years old at the time. Mikaela, who is five years his senior, would have been 23 years old at the time the two were dating.

It appears that Piquet has also responded to the gripes people expressed with the age gap between her and Verstappen online, too.

Another X user who goes by @PapaQuents on the platform included a screenshot of Kelly Piquet's Instagram account, replying to someone who said that Max was 18 years old when she was 27. To which she replied, "He was already 19, but yeah, so what?"

Others defended the couple, with one person writing: "Why am I seeing s--t about Max Verstappen and Kelly on my timeline? So much drama about their age gap. Who the f--k cares? He was 19! Not a f--king child, and she was 27, not 50! I literally know dozens of couples with an 8-year age gap, including my own parents," one person on X remarked.