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Should Verstappen face tougher sanctions - or is outrage overblown? (ad-free)
🕑 Added 2025-06-04 07:00:08 +0000 UTCWith Max Verstappen admitting that his clash with George Russell in the Spanish Grand Prix was “a move that was not right and shouldn’t have happened”, we discuss what that tells us about the four-times world champion in the latest edition of The Race F1 Podcast.
Dutch TV commentator Nelson Valkenburg and Scott Mitchell-Malm join Edd Straw to revisit the accident and examine exactly what it is that drives Verstappen to do things like this.
We also ask whether criticisms about his failure to live up to role model status and questions about if the FIA stewards should be harsher are valid.
There’s also the question of how significant, or overblown, this incident is, as well as listener questions about Verstappen’s future away from Red Bull and whether he could swap between the A-team and Racing Bulls depending on circuit.
Comments
Joe
Far too forgiving. Max obviously thought: "If George can biff me off at T1, I can do it back at T5." Love him but deffs deliberate.
Joe Perkins
Hi guys! Long-time listener since the Autosport days and neutral F1 fan, but brand-new member here. Interested to get your view on my take of the Max/George/Charles incident (and yes, Charles is in there too because he contributed). I don't buy into the narrative that Max used his car "as a weapon" or "Mario Kart" or any of that — he is too much of a pure racer. I think he felt that Charles had instigated contact along the straight, accidentally by drifting left but still causing the coming together, and that this eased his overtake. That would have fired Max up enormously, given how much stick he has taken in the past around his own aggressive manoeuvres. Secondly, in the same corner sequence — and causing the full-on meltdown by compound after being told to hand the place over — George lost control (albeit for a fraction of a second, but by the driving guidelines that is not an overtake), and the team was telling Max to swap positions. I think Max's next moves came from the descending "prove a point red mist," and that he wanted to show that if all it takes to get an overtake done in F1 these days is to slide it down the inside and understeer to claim the corner, then that’s what he would do. I think, in his mind, George was going to take complete avoiding action like Max did at Turn 1 — and it would prove a point without the collision.
