F1 has a Verstappen problem – and keeps ignoring it

For years, the Formula 1 paddock has been praising Max Verstappen – and rightfully so. Everyone is aware of his glorious achievements and his remarkable record. The Red Bull driver keeps amazing crowds with his talent – utterly dominating seasons, grabbing pole positions when his car shouldn’t be in contention, winning races as a dark horse, or making unlikely overtaking moves stick.

Verstappen’s racecraft is exceptional. Just look at the way he snatched the lead from Oscar Piastri at the start of the Emilia-Romagna Grand Prix – few drivers actually are able to achieve such a masterful move. It was audacious, confident, precise, clever – exactly the skills the Dutchman can use to get what he wants.

The thing is, there’s a dark side to Verstappen. He doesn’t even really conceal it, but many in the media, his team and his fanbase pretend not to be aware of it – or just ignore it. This dark side emerged again on Sunday under intense pressure.

After his team asked him to let George Russell through in the Spanish GP, Verstappen slowed down until the Mercedes driver was alongside him, then reaccelerated to hit the Silver Arrows driver. No honest person can truthfully believe this was anything but deliberate; there is no doubt about it, no possible nuance. Yet, the stewards handled it by handing Verstappen a similar penalty to those given to good-faith racers accidentally causing collisions.

A single occurrence of such a foul move is already a problem but could be forgiven; after all, Sebastian Vettel did cross a line when he intentionally collided with Lewis Hamilton in Baku in 2017, which led to a 10-second stop-and-go penalty. But this isn’t the first time we’ve witnessed Verstappen’s unsportsmanlike driving.

Verstappen brake-tested Hamilton in a tense Saudi Arabian GP in 2021 – an uncouth attempt at taking his title rival out of the race – and repeatedly runs his rivals off the track, like Hamilton in the 2021 Brazilian GP or Lando Norris in the 2024 Mexico race. He doesn’t mind losing places in the process, as long as his opponent loses more.

The governing bodies have undeniably failed to address how frequent and intentional Verstappen’s behaviour is, and they won’t even connect the dots to call a spade ‘a spade’ – to call a deliberate move ‘a deliberate move’. Whether they’re ignoring it on purpose or through thoughtlessness, nobody knows.

The stewards’ decision regarding the clash with Russell at Barcelona left much unsaid: “The driver of Car 1 was clearly unhappy with his team’s request to give the position back. At the approach to Turn 5, Car 1 significantly reduced its speed thereby appearing to allow Car 63 to overtake. However, after Car 63 got ahead of Car 1 at the entry of Turn 5, Car 1 suddenly accelerated and collided with Car 63.

“The collision was undoubtedly caused by the actions of Car 1.”

It is standard terminology – though somewhat comical in this context – for stewards to refer to the ‘car’ instead of the driver, but that’s besides the point: they decided not to draw the logical conclusion from their reasoning. Everything in Verstappen’s driving shows he intended to hit Russell, so he should have been disciplined taking into account how serious such an act is in racing.

One week prior, in Monaco, stewards established that Russell had “deliberately” cut the chicane – which is unsportsmanlike but much less dangerous – and they had no qualms about cracking down on the Mercedes driver with a drive-through penalty instead of the usual five or 10 seconds.

At Barcelona, the situation was crystal-clear, yet Verstappen got a standard penalty, more lenient than Russell’s in Monaco. Well, not completely standard as he got three penalty points on his licence instead of two. Go figure.

Verstappen has always been an extremely polarising character. Many believe – or pretend to – that’s just due to his elbows-out racing style, viewed as a logical symptom of his hunger for victory. However, his actions often go far beyond ‘hard but fair’, and he obviously stands by them given the way he usually speaks post-race.

Max Verstappen, Red Bull Racing

Photo by: Sam Bagnall / Motorsport Images via Getty Images

Some will be keen to deem the Spanish GP incident a mere instance of briefly losing composure, yet it just adds to all previous episodes, when Verstappen didn’t get the penalties he deserved. Surely the four-time world champion, who naturally is an extremely confident athlete, is aware – more or less consciously – that when he acts this way, he never loses out.

Penalties on a case-by-case basis have never solved the problem, as his Barcelona move shows. Verstappen brilliantly makes the most of the system’s grey areas when he deems it necessary or feels disrespected, taking things way beyond the limits. This is not about whether a move was completed with four wheels off the track, if a driver moved under braking or who was ahead at the apex. This is about colliding on purpose – unsportsmanlike behaviour onboard 800kg cars reaching 200mph.

The Verstappen problem is a serious one, and the FIA and F1 must now diligently address it.