Max Verstappen faces race ban threat after George Russell drama at Spanish GP
Max Verstappen has enough penalty points to be teetering on the edge of a Formula 1 race band after his furious clash with George Russell towards the end of the Spanish Grand Prix
Max Verstappen is just one point away from triggering a Formula 1 race ban. That is because he was given three more by the stewards for clashing with George Russell in the latter stages of the Spanish Grand Prix, taking him up to a total of 11.
Drivers who accumulated a dozen points in a 12-month period trigger an automatic one-race ban under FIA rules. To date, the only racer in F1 to ever reach that figure was Kevin Magnussen, who missed the 2024 Azerbaijan Grand Prix as a result.
That is the fate Verstappen is now very close to befalling himself. He was given three penalty points for causing a collision with Russell late on in the Barcelona race, having lost his temper when told by his Red Bull team to hand track position back to his Mercedes rival.
He was given a 10-second time penalty for his actions, which dropped him down to just 10th place in the final classification. That cost him a lot of points and has now put him at real risk of a race ban – especially as very few of his points will expire any time soon.
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Two are set to expire on June 30, meaning he will have to get through the Canadian and Austrian Grands Prix without picking up any more. If he fails to do so, then he will be banned for a race. And then he will have to wait for October 27 for his next set of points to disappear.
Explaining their decision to hand the three penalty points to Verstappen, the stewards said: "From the radio communications, it was clear that the driver of Car 1 [Verstappen] was asked by his team to give the position back to Car 63 [Russell] for what they perceived to be an earlier breach by Car 1 for leaving the track and gaining a lasting advantage.
"In fact, we had later determined that we would take no further action in relation to that incident. The driver of Car 1 was clearly unhappy with his team's request to give the position back.
"At the approach to turn five, Car 1 significantly reduced its speed thereby appearing to allow Car 63 to overtake. However, after Car 63 got ahead of Car 1 at the entry of turn five, Car 1 suddenly accelerated and collided with Car 63. The collision was undoubtedly caused by the actions of Car 1. We therefore imposed a 10 second time penalty on Car 1."
That explanation confirmed that the call which came from Red Bull, advising Verstappen to cede a place to Russell, should not have been made. The stewards were never going to punish him for it.
And that was the final straw for Verstappen in terms of losing his temper, and so the incident may never have happened had the team not been overly cautious with their instructions.
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