“Second helpings.”
This has been so funny to me, that it deserved it’s own M101 breakdown. George Russell and Max Verstappen had no problem continuing their beef after Qatar’s Grand Prix weekend brought out the fighting spirit in both parties.
For those who missed it, Max Verstappen got hit with an unusual one-place grid penalty for Sunday’s race after driving unnecessarily slowly during a prep lap in Q3. The victim? George Russell. There was mitigating arguments you could make either way – Russell could see Max the whole way, Max had let other cars through on the lap but was definitely below the delta time, etc.
The beef really began when allegedly during the Driver’s Parade, George thought that a line was drawn between them in the stewards’ office, but Max was still pissed, saying something along the lines of: “Look at what you and your friends at the FIA have done now”. It seemingly lit a fire underneath Max, who block-passed Russell into Turn 1 and would then go on to win the race, with Russell a distant fourth.
After the race, Max laid into George, saying: “Honestly, very disappointing because I think we’re all here, we respect each other a lot and, of course, I’ve been in that meeting room many times in my life, in my career with people that have raced, and I’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard. And that for me… I lost all respect.” He went one further like he often days with his buddies in the Dutch media (Viaplay), when he said: “He always acts extremely polite in front of the cameras but if you sit together with him personally, he’s a completely different person. I truly can’t stand that. Then you might as well get lost. I don’t want anything to do with you.”. Team Boss Christian Horner chimed in by calling Russell’s actions in the office: “Hysterics.”
Russell didn’t get a right to reply immediately because he wasn’t on the podium in Qatar, but went scorched earth on Max when asked in his media debrief today:
“I find it all quite ironic, considering Saturday night he said he’s going to purposely go out of his way to crash into me and, quote, “put me on my fucking head in the wall. To question somebody’s integrity as a person, while saying comments like that the day before, I find it very ironic, and I’m not going to sit here and accept it.
“People have been bullied by Max for years now, and you can’t question his driving abilities. But he cannot deal with adversity whenever anything has gone against him. Jeddah ’21, Brazil ’21, he lashes out. Budapest this year, very first race, the car wasn’t dominant, crashing into Lewis, slamming his team.”
He contiuned: “I just don’t know why other drivers have when they’ve been in this battle with him, just sort of made it so easy and just let it be. Lewis is a world champion who I aspire to be like, and I think he is a gold standard of a role model that younger kids should be looking up to. And the way Lewis dealt with that championship fight, he was hard, he was aggressive, he was always respectful, and he never went beyond the line. You can go beyond the line in making a slight misjudgement, but going out of your way to say you will purposefully crash into somebody and put them on their head is beyond the line.”
“I’ve known him for 12 years. We’ve had respect with one another beforehand. We’ve never had any collisions….but we’ve got a guy who’s on the top of this sport and who feels he’s above the law. I don’t think that’s right.
“I admire his on-track battles, and when he is hard and aggressive. But what we saw at the end of the season in ’21, or what we saw in Mexico with Lando [Norris], they weren’t hard, aggressive manoeuvres. They were do or die: ‘I’m willing to take this guy out.’ Which I don’t think is the way we should go racing.”
Verstappen was more laid back in response. When asked about the threat, he said: “That’s already not correct. But you know, those things don’t surprise me. I just give my opinion about how he is. Of course, he’s not happy with it, but it’s the same thing he did at the stewards. Lying and putting things together that aren’t correct.”
“He’s a backstabber. It doesn’t matter to me. You don’t have to talk too much about people like that, they are just losers.”
When responding to being called a bully: “Why would anyone have to stand up against me? – I did nothing wrong, did I? I just said I’m disappointed about his actions at the stewards, that’s all.”
“It has nothing to do with anything else. I was very relaxed, I had already won my championship. Only, he had to be so dramatic to try and start first. He was screaming to gain one place, for him it can make a big difference.”
“He is mentioning a lot of things that aren’t based on the truth. But that is what happened at the stewards as well. He insinuated a lot of things that don’t make any sense. It’s typical for him. People can believe whatever they want, it’s just not true. I am always the same person, whether I’m at home, here or at the stewards. You can’t say that about everyone.”
Dre’s Verdict:
First of all, on a serious level here; I sincerely hope that what Max said wasn’t true. I’m not taking sides on this one, but threatening to crash into someone on purpose is a hefty accusation that is objectively unacceptable. I always say there are three sides to every story – Person X, Y and the truth. We don’t know the truth, we weren’t in the room. Someone could be lying, or someone could be recalling incorrectly, it happens. If it is true, that’s an attitude that needs to be stamped out in F1 entirely, we don’t need that shit. If George is lying, that’s a nasty one to drop. I doubt we’ll ever get the true story on that one.
But what I will say is this – Russell and his camp had four days to orchestrate a response, and it sounds very much like he did just that. For instance, Bradley Lord in the Mercedes camp has over 20 years of experience as a press officer, journalist and now chief communications officer in the team. They knew where to hit Max where it hurts.
They knew exactly what they were doing on this one. Mentioning Verstappen’s previous racing transgressions and Abu Dhabi 2021 and the comparisons to Lewis Hamilton wasn’t an accident. Lewis in the eyes of most, will be seen as the victim of how that Championship battle played out, and even though Max was nothing more than the other protagonist who accidentally benefited from Michael Masi’s incompetence, he’ll always be seen as the “villain” of the piece, especially given how he (imo), stepped over the line himself towards the end of that season (Brazil and Saudi Arabia).
Lewis is arguably the greatest of all time, and while he’s had his fair share of aggressive misfires himself (Pepperidge Albon remembers), him being revered as the clean, role model and legendary figure, by comparison to Max being labelled as over-aggressive and mentions a title many think he didn’t deserve, isn’t exactly subtle. Even more so when George is doing that classic “work the crowd” move when he says that I “don’t know why more people aren’t standing up to him”. For what it’s worth, I don’t think Max is a bully or that anyone else on track is scared of him, but alas.
What I didn’t put in the above section was that George tried to move the goalposts and make out that Masi would be “fearing for his life” if the role was reversed. Not cool – Michael Masi DID receive death threats for how that race played out, and I don’t care what you tell me, it’s never okay to threaten someone’s life over an incorrect call in a sports event. Ever.
Beyond that – Points were made. Max was the one who initially leaked what had happened in a private meeting to score points with the public. You could make a case that calling George two-faced crosses the line into personal attacks, and when that happens, the gloves can easily come off. In the words of Bomani Jones: “Disrespect will not be tolerated”.
I think the key difference here is, that George is very good at playing the game and working that heel persona. He’s very slick with the media most of the time, and I think generally carries himself well, but he’s not afraid to get his hands dirty when he needs to. We saw that when he fought tooth and nail to impress when he was at Williams in his early career. He took Bottas out in Imola when the Finn was still a Mercedes driver and smacked him over the head for it minutes after the wreckage stopped moving, then told the press that Val “tried to kill him”. Yeesh.
He had no problem playing down a whack to Verstappen’s sidepod in Baku last year and has constantly had a similar bullish attitude to hard racing that he’s so quick to label Max with. The Valentino Rossi to Max’s Marc Marquez – the latter being largely unrepentant and impersonal as to who he is and how he races. Max doesn’t discriminate, he’s always been this way, blunt and unsympathetic. The outfits may be different, but this is two Spidermen pointing to each other.
Same goes for the team bosses. Little needs to be said about how I feel on Christian Horner and his scratch to be the main character, but Toto Wolff has had similar tendencies too. Standing shoulder to shoulder and calling Horner a “terrier” about how much he talks, when he himself would be docked by Football’s “tapping-up” laws about trying to sign Max to his team is a bit rich, personally. It’s all one big game, and it’s mad petty. And chances are if you’re reading this, you have a favourite and you’re just going to lean the way you want to. None of this is new information or canon. Max is aggressive? No shit.
The season’s over. Red Bull and Mercedes have nothing to play for. And all this started over the smallest on-track penalty in the book. But every sport needs a heel, and the reaction today has shown is that George is more than prepared to play that role for 2025 and beyond. Lando Norris isn’t that kind of character, more passive and self-reflecting in how he handles his business. Behind Russell’s smiles lie a shrewd, experienced politician. It’s the exact kind of foil that would be very interesting if he becomes Mercedes #1 next year and has a car that can take Max on.
But when the season’s just about over, for now, we just have to wait for that next album to drop. MUSTARD!
