Russell was next, at turn 1, giving Verstappen what looked like a dose of his own medicine. The Red Bull was forced to use the escape road and maintained his position before being told by his team to give the place back. Already on the back foot, this was too much, he told his race engineer. “But that’s the rules,” replied the laconic Gianpiero Lambiase.
Verstappen was tight-lipped about the incident following the race but has since said it was “a move that was not right and shouldn’t have happened.”
Credit:
Mark Thompson/Getty Images
Verstappen slowed to let Russell through, then sped up into turn 4, opening up his steering and colliding with the Mercedes. Call it petulance or frustration; it was an inexcusable lapse of judgment from a driver. Using one’s car as a weapon against another competitor on track is unacceptable, and the 10-second penalty that Verstappen earned as a result dropped him to 10th place at the end, ruining his own race more than anyone else’s.
We all have days we’re not proud of, when we don’t control our worst emotions. And I think that when he looks back on Sunday, it won’t be a Grand Prix that Max Verstappen is proud of.
The post-mortem would have been quite fast, as this year, the teams all have access to a new content delivery system from Globant that provides onboard video, audio, and some telemetry. That means you can really see both sides of an argument to get a little perspective, all through an iOS-like interface. On that note, the Globant team is keen to talk, so if you have any technical questions about how they provide all that data to the teams at the track, please drop them in the comments, and we’ll address them in a separate article.
Sadly, Verstappen is not the only multiple-time world champion to succumb to such behavior. Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, and Sebastian Vettel have 14 championships between them, and each blotted their copybooks on more than one occasion. Don’t think it’s required to get to the top, though; I’ve never once seen Lewis Hamilton lose it like that, and it will be a while before anyone has as many wins as Sir Lewis.
