CR-V Hybrid

Make
Honda
Segment
SUV

As one of the perks of being a Formular1 driver - and a defending world champion at that - Max Verstappen had the chance to pilot the Honda CR-V Hybrid Racer.

The car isn't any ordinary compact SUV, though. In case you missed it, the CR-V Hybrid Racer is a one-off build spearheaded by Honda Performance Development (HPD) for select IndyCar events. It goes by the nickname "The Beast," and there's a good reason for that.

In this one-minute video released by Honda, you'll see the current F1 champion was permitted to hoon the hybrid race car at the Homestead-Miami Speedway. And boy, Max sure didn't hold back.

IndyCar driver James Hinchcliff introduced the unique CR-V to Verstappen. The video, which was shot before Max Verstappen's win at the 2023 Miami GP, showed the car being thrown around the track. In other parts of the video, he was doing donuts amid thick smoke from the burning rubber.

This isn't the first appearance of Verstappen in a Honda video ever since the return of the Japanese marque to Formula 1 last year with Red Bull. The Dutch racer also drove a Honda HR-V last year for an ad where he was much more civilized behind the wheel of the small crossover.

As mentioned, the Honda CR-V Hybrid Racer is a one-off SUV that will appear in several IndyCar events this year. Although it looks like a family SUV, it's actually a race car with a custom tube chassis and a steel body of the sixth-generation CR-V. The lower half is all carbon fiber, while the exterior has massive fender flares, cool butterfly front doors, and a gigantic rear wing for good measure.

The Xtrac six-speed paddle-shift transmission and twin-turbocharged hybrid V6 IndyCar engine with 800 horsepower are located where the second-row seats would be. The CR-V Hybrid Racer uses a supercapacitor storage system and is called a "rolling laboratory" by Honda, meant to test and explore different performance aspects, including electrification.