There was no justification for Max Verstappen’s rash and futile act of retribution at the Spanish Grand Prix, when he deliberately drove into the side of George Russell’s car. The world champion knows it and on Monday he admitted as much with something of a mea culpa on social media. Yet it also must be considered that it is part and parcel of what makes Verstappen so competitive, albeit in this case in an entirely unedifying and self‑defeating fashion.
Angry and frustrated at a sequence of events in Barcelona, including having to cede a place to Russell, Verstappen surrendered to his baser instincts. Having pulled over to give the place to Russell, he clearly then felt a point had to be made and accelerated back up the inside to collide with the Mercedes.
The Dutchman shares those ultra‑competitive traits with others, perhaps notably Michael Schumacher and Ayrton Senna, but there is also a fundamental difference. When Schumacher ruthlessly and deliberately clashed with Damon Hill at Adelaide in 1994 and then Jacques Villeneuve at Jerez in 1997, he had a specific purpose in mind – the moves were with the intent of winning the world championship. Similarly, Senna taking out Alain Prost at Suzuka in 1990. Cynical, ruthless, ugly and unsportsmanlike, without doubt, but notably with purpose.
Nigel Mansell recalls that Senna’s uncompromising attitude was aimed expressly at intimidating other drivers. Verstappen’s wild lunge at Russell in Spain was none of these things. It served no end other than to vent his own anger and has left his title hopes hanging by the slenderest of threads.
Worse still it coloured what has otherwise been an enormously impressive season in which he has stayed with the McLarens with immense determination and consistency, taking every opportunity and returning the maximum when he had none.
This moment of madness was a pointless flailing that rendered those efforts all but futile and while he maintains he was never really in the title fight, his fearsome efforts thus far this season belie that claim because for all the rightful opprobrium from Sunday, Verstappen is better and more than the driver who gave in to his emotions. His legacy as a potentially great champion depends on him proving that.
