Max Verstappen crash with George Russell analysis, video, driver ban, Spain talking points

Without momentum and without the car underneath him, he’s surely now without hope too thanks to a moment of spectacular hot-headedness that has always been the reverse side of his generational talent.

On Monday, Verstappen explained the frustrations of the day saw him step over the line.

“We had an exciting strategy and good race in Barcelona, till the safety car came out,” he wrote on Instagram.

“Our tyre choice to the end and some moves after the safety car restart fuelled my frustration, leading to a move that was not right and shouldn’t have happened.

“I always give everything out there for the team and emotions can run high. You win some together, you lose some together. See you in Montreal.”

It’s worth understanding how the Dutchman slid from an optimistic third on the grid to a penalised and contentious 10th on the day his title defence almost certainly died.

AMBITIOUS STRATEGY BACKFIRES BIG TIME, LIGHTING THE FUSE

Knowing its car wasn’t quick enough, Red Bull Racing cooked up an ambitious three-stop strategy to try to propel Verstappen into the top two places.

For a while it seemed to be working.

A great start got him ahead of Norris, and holding him back for 11 laps ensured at least one McLaren was partially vulnerable for most of the race.

His subsequent two quick stops allowed him to maximise his pace while Piastri and Norris managed their tyres in the lead. Suddenly he was right on the back of the leading group in time for the crucial final stops.

Had it not been for an errantly placed Yuki Tsunoda as he rejoined the race and some recalcitrant lapped traffic, Red Bull Racing could have pulled off an upset to deny McLaren its one-two finish.

But at least a podium was certain — until it wasn’t.

The one risk of Verstappen’s strategy was that it left him without a spare set of tyres for a badly timed safety car. Andrea Kimi Antonelli’s power unit failure with 11 laps to go generated exactly that scenario.

Like most of the field, he pitted for tyres for what would be a final six-lap sprint to the flag.

He was the only driver to rejoin the race with unloved hards.

They were the only new or newish tyres he had left, but the white-walled rubber was so slow that no other driver touched them at any stage of the race.

“New tyres or fresh tyres do make quite a bit of difference as well,” he told Sky Sports afterwards, though he added: “I think no-one really expected the hard tyre was so poor.

“When it was only six laps maybe it would have been better to stay out. That’s of course a bit easy to say right now.”

Evidence further down the field suggested staying out also would have cost him. Liam Lawson, Esteban Ocon and Gabriel Bortoleto all gambled on not stopping and all lost places after the restart.

But the hard tyre was costly all the same and sent his race — and his mood — spiralling out of control.

‘HE JUST RAMMED INTO ME’

The lack of grip from the hard tyre was clear immediately at the restart, when Verstappen suffered a big snap of oversteer out of the final corner.

Charles Leclerc was ready to pounce.

The Monegasque was having a good race. His gamble to save a set of softs from qualifying for the race had been paying off. He launched from seventh but was up to fifth by the end of the first lap, and he was ordered past teammate Lewis Hamilton shortly afterwards when it was clear he was the much faster Ferrari.

Now he had a shot at an unlikely podium.

“I think P4 in a normal race would’ve been our position,” he said. “With a safety car we got lucky.”

With much better exit speed, Leclerc easily pulled alongside Verstappen halfway down the straight, where the two engaged in some brief brinkmanship that saw them make light contact.

“He tried to bring me to the dirty side of the track — which I would have done, which is normal,” Leclerc explained. “Then once I had the upper hand in terms of speed, I tried to take the slipstream a little bit [by moving back towards him].

“On the first move I was willing to move a tiny bit. On the second move he wasn’t [willing to move].

“That is the difference in the contact or not.

“At the end of the day that’s racing. I don’t think there’s any big problem with it.”

Verstappen had a different view of it at the time.

“He just rammed into me,” he radioed angrily. “Charles just rammed into me on the straight.”

The stewards ruled after the race that both drivers were equally to blame and so took no further action.

RED BULL RACING CAUTION FUELS THE FIRE

Verstappen’s snap of oversteer left him vulnerable down the straight to George Russell too, and the Mercedes driver spied his chance into the first turn.

He was late on the brakes, but though he as clearly on a trajectory to keep his car on track, he had a momentary wobble as he approached the apex. Coinciding with Verstappen turning into the corner, the two made contact that pushed the Dutchman wide and sent him scrambling for the run-off.

He rejoined in fourth, still ahead of the Mercedes, but now with a problem for his pit wall to consider.

Was Russell’s move legal, and if so, should Verstappen given the place back?

According to the racing rules agreed between the drivers and the governing body — which changed this year but have not been made public — Russell needed to be ahead at the apex, be capable of remaining on track and remain in control of his car at all times.

He definitely satisfied the first two criteria. The third was borderline.

But perhaps because Verstappen has come off second-best in a similar situation already once this year — against Piastri in Saudi Arabia — Red Bull Racing decided to be unusually cautious and order Verstappen to hand the place to Russell.

From merely enraged, he suddenly became apoplectic.

“What the f***!” he exclaimed, his blood boiling over two perceived injustices in the space of a few seconds.

In an ironic twist, the stewards revealed after the race that they wouldn’t have penalised Verstappen for leaving the track, judging Russell’s momentary loss of control to be the triggering event.

But that ruling came too late for Verstappen, whose frustration had hit its limit.

DID THE PENALTY FIT THE CRIME?

Verstappen slowed down approaching turn 5 in what appeared to be a moment of acquiescence to his team’s command. Russell, assuming the Dutchman was redressing, proceeded to sweep around his outside.

But before the Mercedes driver could complete the move, Verstappen put his foot down, hitting the Briton and bumping him towards the stones.

It was a remarkable scene.

Was it pure frustration boiling over?

Was it Verstappen attempting to give Russell a taste of his own medicine from the first turn?

Whatever it was, there was little doubt it was deliberate, something Verstappen refused to deny in any post-race interview.

Russell’s first impression was much the same.

“I don’t really know what was going through his mind. It felt deliberate in the moment” he told Sky Sports. “I’ve seen those sorts of manoeuvres before on simulator games and in go karting but never in Formula 1.”

The stewards took a dim view of the crash and slapped Verstappen with a 10-second penalty that would demote him to 10th and three penalty points on his licence, bringing him to 11 points.

Any driver who accrues 12 points in a 12-month period automatically receives a one-race ban. Verstappen will sit on 11 points for at least another two grands prix.

It wasn’t enough for some pundits, who believe the Dutchman shouldn’t wait to be excluded from a race.

“That’s something which is extremely unacceptable and I think the rules would be a black flag [disqualification],” Nico Rosberg, the 2016 world champion, told Sky Sports. “If you wait for your opponent to bang into him, that’s a black flag.”

There’s precedent for harsher action. At the 2017 Azerbaijan Grand Prix the stewards handed Sebastian Vettel a 10-second stop-go penalty for deliberately bumping Lewis Hamilton, the German having become suddenly angered when he thought the Mercedes driver brake-tested him behind the safety car.

While not exactly the same, Verstappen’s indiscretion was sufficiently similar to justify a stronger rebuke, though the helping of penalty points could well end up stringing more than any time penalty.

‘HE LETS HIMSELF DOWN’

It was interesting to observe the top three finishers watch the crash on the post-race highlights package in the cool-down room. Rarely short of an opinion in the celebratory atmosphere, Piastri, Norris and Leclerc silenced themselves as the video rolled.

It took Norris to break the quiet: “I’ve done that before in Mario Kart”.

Drivers wouldn’t otherwise be drawn on the issue after the race, but Russell articulated what he saw as the core contradiction at the heart of Verstappen’s character.

“Max is such an amazing driver and so many people look up to him,” he said. “It’s just a shame something like that continues to occur. It just seems totally unnecessary, and it never seems to benefit him.

“You see like in Austin last year some of the best moves ever, then you go to Mexico and he lets himself down a bit [running Norris off the road].

“You go to Imola [this season], one of the best moves we’ve seen in a long time [at the first turn on Piastri], and then this happens.”

Russell, having benefited from Verstappen’s brain fade, avoided wading too deeply into the issue, but it was only six months ago that he unleashed on the Dutchman for his on-track behaviour.

“He cannot deal with adversity,” he said after his run-in with the Dutchman in Qatar last year. “Whenever anything is not going his way, he lashes out with unnecessary anger and borderline violence.

“That is not a guy who I respect.”

Verstappen has forever had a propensity to lash out when the circumstances of a race begin to get away from him. It’s part of his all-or-nothing, win-or crash attitude. Most of the time it manifests as sensational racecraft. But sometimes it’s unseemly, and occasionally it’s ugly. Sunday was one of those days.

The material impacts are clear. Verstappen is now 49 points adrift in the drivers championship, which is almost certainly insurmountable in the inconsistent Red Bull Racing car.

Red Bull Racing has also suffered, dropping to fourth in the constructors championship behind Ferrari, though that’s also clearly down to the team’s inability to foster a competitive second driver.

The immaterial impacts are less obvious.

Verstappen appears to have little regard for his legacy, but Formula 1 needs its world champions to set the sport’s standards.

In a year F1 is likely to crown a new champion, the way Verstappen cedes his throne will matter.

SIDESHOW TO PIASTRI DOMINATION

In that context it’s telling that Verstappen’s antics were a sideshow to the main event: another assured Piastri victory.

Rare were the moments this weekend in which the Melburnian looked anything other than in total control. From taking pole with the biggest margin of the season to acing his start and blitzing the restart, Piastri regained some helpful momentum at the end of a tricky triple-header that saw Norris eat into his title lead.

He became the third McLaren driver ever with eight consecutive podiums, joining legends Ayrton Senna and Lewis Hamilton.

And he replenished his advantage to 10 points in what is now almost certainly a one-on-one all-McLaren championship battle.

“I’m very proud, very satisfied,” he told Sky Sports. “I don’t have much more to add.

“It’s been a really good weekend from basically start to finish. FP2 to now has been pretty much perfect.

“We executed everything needed to today. Great start, managed the first stint well, good pit stops, stuck to our guns on strategy — we executed pretty much perfectly. I can’t ask for more.

“I think this weekend in particularly we’ve done a very good job of finding every bit we can.”

Norris wasn’t too disappointed with second. His day could so easily have been much, much worse after Verstappen and Russell sandwiched him into the first turn, but he wisely chose to let the Dutchman through into second place.

It took him 12 laps to regain the position, and those the deficit to Piastri by then was decisive, a seven-point loss is much easier to absorb than a DNF.

There are 15 rounds remaining to decide the championship. Piastri is mounting a strong claim, and after Verstappen’s meltdown, it seems he has just one rival left to beat.