Dirty driving taints legacies – Max Verstappen must learn to race clean

F1 should be a sport where the fastest driver wins, not the most aggressive – Dutchman’s overly robust approach undermines his talent

For the second week in a row, Max Verstappen’s driving has been a major talking point. He escaped sanction but not criticism in Austin, yet in Mexico he found himself subject to both, with two 10-second time penalties for incidents with championship rival Lando Norris.
Those are hefty penalties given by the FIA stewards, but they were deserved. Verstappen suffered the consequences of his actions and finished sixth, dropping 10 points to Norris in the standings.
I was disappointed with how Verstappen drove on Sunday. He is a tremendously talented driver but his approach has often pushed the limits at best and gone beyond them at worst. That is sad to see. When these things keep happening, his overly robust approach undermines his talent. We are trying to make F1 a sport where the fastest driver wins, not the most aggressive or bravest driver – this is not bumper cars.
What is also disappointing is that it came a week after all the outcry about his racing at the Circuit of the Americas. The FIA said it was going to be keeping a closer eye on those kinds of on-track/off-track overtakes and moves in the style that Verstappen has deployed numerous times. Yet he made no change to his approach and not only let himself down but the team.
LANDO AND MAX CLASH ⚔️Their battle lets Charles Leclerc through into second! 👇 pic.twitter.com/ZXpqi35Fqw
Still, when it comes to championship battles, this style of driving is nothing new. We had the Prost vs Senna years and Michael Schumacher had controversial clashes with both Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve in 1994 and 1997 in title deciders. When you get to the business end of the season it tends to encourage riskier driving that pushes the boundaries with so much at stake. Verstappen, though, needs to look at himself in the mirror and ask whether he wants to be known as a fast driver or a fast and controversial one. If he keeps this up it will taint his reputation.
I do not necessarily think that the moves in Mexico were more extreme than in Austin. We have to remember that these cars are quick, so you are dealing with decisions taken in tenths if not thousandths of a second. If we look at another close battle between George Russell and Lewis Hamilton, they had quick reactions both in defending and overtaking, but raced cleanly.
Ultimately, though, Verstappen should have been smarter when coming up against Norris and recognised that carrying on as he did could bring him pain from the stewards. Clearly he does not want to lose points to his nearest rival, hence his aggressive defending, but in being awarded the penalties he ensured that he lost ground. It was not smart for a three-time world champion.
Verstappen justifies his driving style by saying that his car is not as good as it used to be or needs to be, which is true, and that it forces him into driving harder than he had to previously, when Red Bull were the class of the field. It does not have to be like that.
An eternity for Max ⌛He serves his 20-seconds worth of penalties during his first pit stop ⏱️ pic.twitter.com/J5hRMfya0z
Certainly, he raced harder with Norris than he did with the Ferraris at the start of the grand prix. By the time Norris caught him he must have known he was not in contention for the victory and so tried to get the best result by bullying Norris off the track.
It is easy to drive cleanly and respect your rivals when you are half-a-second-a-lap quicker than the next-best driver. As fast as he is, I would not have him at the top of my “best wheel-to-wheel racers” list. He won the 2022 and 2023 titles at a canter but we are seeing the driver we saw in the 2021 battle with Hamilton. I would argue that this is the “real” Max Verstappen and that on too many occasions the red mist takes over.
Will these significant penalties force a change of approach? He might think twice about repeating his actions and risk making his healthy title lead less comfortable in the coming weeks.
What he should do is accept that there are occasions when he needs to settle for getting the best possible performance from the car. Even removing the 20 seconds of penalties, Verstappen was a long way off the pace of the Ferraris and Norris in Mexico City. Sometimes the best you can do is fifth. The crucial thing, though, is not to throw away points with silly crashes or unnecessary penalties. That is going to apply especially to next season, when it looks like three or perhaps four teams could be in the running for victories.
The greater the competition, the more you need to accept you cannot win every day. That is what Verstappen is missing at the minute. There was a time not too long ago when he could win every Sunday, but he seems to be having a hard time coming to terms with a car that has now not won in 10 grands prix.