Kelly Piquet explains balance with Max Verstappen

Kelly Piquet says her relationship with Max Verstappen works because the pair accept that Formula 1 sets the rhythm of family life and because both are willing to make sacrifices to support the other’s career.

Speaking on the Not Alone podcast, Piquet said that balance is the key reason the relationship holds together, even when it forces difficult professional choices. “I am proud of the partner” she is, she said, “the mother” she is, and “also who I am as a person,” but added that there are “a lot of jobs I have to say no to,” including “very special or well-paid” ones. “If you don’t know how to find balance, the whole relationship is put under pressure,” she said.

Piquet said that often means organizing the household around Verstappen’s schedule because “he is the one in the spotlight and his job now simply demands the most of him.” She said she feels privileged to be in a position where turning down assignments is possible when needed, particularly so the children are not left “all alone.”

She also described that support as mutual rather than one-sided. Piquet said Verstappen encourages her to “go out and do what I need to do,” and gave a recent example from a few weeks ago, when she was in the United States with her older daughter Penelope while Verstappen stayed at home with their baby Lily. “That went fine, everything went as it should,” she said.

The podcast was the first time Piquet had spoken openly in detail about the relationship, and she said its stability comes from more than simply fitting around a race calendar. “The nice thing about our relationship is that we hardly let ego play a role,” she said, describing Verstappen as someone who “goes to work, completes his task, and then returns home” and calling him “really a family person.”

For Verstappen, whose Formula 1 commitments remain the most demanding part of the couple’s routine, that dynamic matters because Piquet said the arrangement only works when both sides keep communicating and are ready to reset the balance when it starts to drift.