The first time Serage pointed her phone at a car and hit record, she wasn’t thinking about Silverstone. Or Disney+. Or staring into her mirrors with Max Verstappen looming large in the background.
She was just making “silly car videos”.
Now those clips have dragged her all the way to the heart of Formula One territory, into a 100-strong grid tasked with one absurdly simple, brutally difficult mission: stop Max Verstappen from winning.
From TikTok to taking on a titan
“One of my dreams was to meet Max Verstappen, and through this journey it’s all come true,” the 30-year-old Aucklander said, still trying to process how an online alter ego called “Race Mode” has turned into a boarding pass to Silverstone. “My brain is a bit all over the show – but I’m ready.”
Ready, in this case, means more than a selfie in the paddock.
Red Bull has picked Serage as the sole New Zealand representative in the made-for-Disney+ event, which will be broadcast on September 16. She’ll line up alongside Red Bull athletes, celebrities, fellow creators and fans, all united by one brief: keep Verstappen in their mirrors and make his life as awkward as possible.
She won’t be the only Kiwi accent in the room. New Zealand-born, Australia-based TikTok creator Nathan Lust will also be part of the spectacle. But on the grid, Serage carries the flag alone.
“Never in my wildest dreams did I think ‘Race Mode’ and all my silly car videos would get me in front of Max,” she said. “To see him talking and inviting me? I’m going to keep that video forever.”
Crash course, fast track
Dreams are one thing. A braking point at Silverstone is another.
With less than three weeks to go before the mid-September race, Serage headed to Game Over in East Auckland for a crash course in something a little more serious than content creation: electric go-karts.
Her instructor? Daniel Gaunt – two-time New Zealand Grand Prix winner, former Toyota Racing Series champion and current Supercars driver – who owns and operates the venue. If you’re going to jump from TikTok to taking on a world champion, that’s not a bad person to show you the racing line. Kiwi drifting star Mad Mike has also weighed in with advice.
“I felt good, Dan from Game Over was giving me tips,” Serage said after her first session. “We did some great laps, I was following behind him and learning apexes.
“I feel more pumped-up and more ready than ever. Electric cars are faster than petrol ones, [but] once I feel the petrol ones, I think I’ll be quite ready.”
She’s not stopping at karting. Back home, a simulator is already dialled in.
“We have a simulator that I’ve set up for Silverstone. That’s going to help me prepare, knowing what I’m looking at when I get there.
“I’ve never been to Silverstone before, this is my first long-haul flight ever.”
The leap is enormous: from local track to one of motorsport’s cathedrals, from online community to global broadcast. Yet the preparation is real, the intent obvious.
The Max factor
Then there’s the man she’s supposed to keep behind her.
Verstappen, 28, is deep into one of the most dominant careers Formula One has seen. Four world drivers’ championships already, 71 race wins, 131 podiums across 12 seasons, and a contract locked in with Red Bull until the end of 2030. He has turned grand prix racing into a weekly masterclass.
Against that backdrop, a grid of non-professional drivers looks like light work.
Serage knows it. She’s not deluded about the scale of the task. But she does have a plan.
“There’s qualifying, so my goal is to make it as far as I can in that,” she said. The higher she starts, the longer she can try to keep the reigning king of F1 in her wake.
“When he does come up – which he will, he’s Max Verstappen – I’m going to try and have a little battle to keep on the driving line and see what I can do.
“I do think he’ll overtake me, that’s inevitable, but I definitely want to have a fun interaction with him.”
That’s the essence of this whole project. The result is almost pre-written: Verstappen, the relentless benchmark, hunting down a field of wide-eyed challengers. The intrigue lies in those few corners before he gets there – the defensive moves, the late braking, the fleeting moment when a creator from Auckland can say she fought, however briefly, with one of the greatest to ever do it.
For Serage, the win isn’t about the chequered flag. It’s the journey from a phone screen to the F1 paddock, from “silly car videos” to a grid slot at Silverstone with Max Verstappen in her mirrors.
Now the camera rolls on a very different kind of content.
