The Spanish Grand Prix yesterday at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya wasn't bad, in our opinion, and the closing laps were interesting. The big talking point is Max Verstappen's mental breakdown, resulting in a road rage tantrum.
We don't want to spend ten paragraphs on the back story, but Verstappen took one more stop than his rivals, with Max stopping thrice verses the other guys pitting only twice. A safety car near the end saw everyone dive in for a cheap stop, but virtually everyone came out on softs with little race left but Verstappen was fitted with hard tires. Nobody wanted hard tires at any point. Max was unhappy, and a sitting duck surrounded by everyone on soft rubber.
The race restarted and at one point Verstappen and Russell came together, with neither sustaining damage but Max running off track. His team told him to give his position to Russell, which irked Max, and it turned out the FIA wouldn't have expected Max to give George the place, but Red Bull made that call.
In a fit of road rage, Verstappen looked to be giving Russell the position, but then clearly deliberately banged into him instead. He later gave the position for real. The talking point is the bit where Max deliberately banged into George.
Accidents and mistakes happen, and drivers often get penalties for them. This wasn't an accident, though. It was a deliberate road rage meltdown. Verstappen was given a ten-second penalty for it, and since there were few laps remaining after a restart this caused Max to drop from fifth to tenth.
At the time, I was satisfied with the penalty. However, a day later and several discussions, interviews, and articles later, I'm not so sure. Ten seconds might be fine for a goof-up collision, but that's not what this was. Additionally, it only cost him five positions because the race ended with cars closer than usual. Usually, such a penalty might have only cost him one position, maybe none, for deliberate road rage.
Former champion Nico Rosberg argued Verstappen should have been disqualified altogether. That might have been more fitting the crime. Others have argued, siting past incidences, that it should be worse than that, maybe up to disqualification from the entire championship.
In particular, 1997 comes to mind. At the close of the championship, Michael Schumacher was under threat from Jacques Villeneuve and decided to eliminate that threat by colliding with Villeneuve as he was overtaking Schumacher. His effort backfired as Villeneuve was unscathed and went on to clinch the championship, while Schumacher took himself out of the race. However, his deliberate, dirty move got him excluded from the entire championship altogether.
(We wanted to display it here but the FIA requires you to click on it and view it directly from YouTube.)
Schumacher's dirty move was in desperation for the championship win. Verstappen's move wasn't for a championship win, a race win, or even a podium, but for fourth place and to make a statement. It demonstrates poor judgment and poor sportsmanship. It demonstrates a willingness to jeopardize others' races, cars, and potentially even safety just because he's angry.
After the race, drivers watched highlights in the cooldown room, where they gasped at Max's move and Lando Norris joked that he has made similar moves... in Mario Kart.
(The FIA strikes again.)
Max Verstappen's behavior was more at home in a multiplayer video game like The Crew than in professional motorsport, particularly at the highest level of motorsport in the world. Even in video games, when you get towards the more realistic stuff this kind of behavior is frowned upon or even penalized. In sim racing, especially with racing leagues, it's not accepted and punished. That's in video games. In real life Formula 1 the bar should be higher.
