Will Max Verstappen get a race ban for deliberate George Russell crash?

Metro

2 days ago

Max Verstappen is on the verge of receiving a one-race ban from Formula 1 following his controversial collision with George Russell at the Spanish Grand Prix.
In the final laps of Sunday's race, which was won by Oscar Piastri, the pair made contact at the safety car restart, with Verstappen subsequently cutting turn one.
Red Bull asked the irate Dutchman to let Russell overtake him and initially he pulled aside at turn five, appearing to comply.
But suddenly, Verstappen drove into the side of his rival's Mercedes, slightly damaging both cars before finally letting the Brit past.
After the race, the four-time champion essentially confessed to deliberately causing the crash, with Russell and the rest of the grid left stunned by the incident.
Stewards immediately investigated the crash and quickly slapped Verstappen with a 10-second time penalty.
This meant that he dropped from fifth to 10th in the race result, costing him valuable points in the championship battle with Piastri and Lando Norris.
Explaining their decision, they 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 5, 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 5, 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.'
However, the stewards also handed Verstappen three penalty points on his superlicence, bringing his tally up to 11.
Crucially, if a driver receives 12 points over a 12-month period they will be handed a one-race ban.
Fortunately for the Red Bull star, two of the points he's accumulated will expire soon on June 30.
Unfortunately for him, there are two more grand prix before the end of the month – Canada on June 15 and Austria on June 29 – one more point at either will see him suspended.
Since the penalty point system was introduced a decade ago, only one driver has received a race ban, namely former Haas star Kevin Magnussen last year.
Max Verstappen was in no mood to discuss the incident post-race but appeared to confess that it was deliberate.
Asked by Sky Sports whether the contact was intentional, the 27-year-old angrily replied: 'Does it matter?'
Pushed again for an answer, he responded: 'Yeah, okay. That's great. I prefer to speak about the race rather than one single moment.'
Read the full quotes and George Russell's reaction here.
On commentary duty for Sky Sports, 2016 F1 champion Nico Rosberg, was left outraged by Verstappen's actions and immediately called for him to be disqualified from the race.
'Wow, that's bad bad bad. He just rammed him full on. You need to black flag him,' the German said.
'Max was right in the first instance and then the team went against Max and caused him to boil over. The first one was George's fault because he went in too hot, oversteered out and tapped Max who then had to use the escape road. More Trending
'In Max's eyes he's 100 per cent in the right. 'Why are you telling me to do this, watch this I will show you what he did'. Slowed down and rammed into him which is even worse. To slow down and ram into another driver is pretty bad.
'That [penalty] is a very lenient one from my point of view. Remember Sebastian Vettel against Lewis Hamilton in Baku 2017. Vettel got a 10-second stop and go penalty for that incident back then.
'It looked like a very intentional retaliation. Wait for the opponent, go ramming into him, just like you felt the other guy rammed into you at Turn 1.
'That's something which is extremely unacceptable and I think the rules would be a black flag yes. If you wait for your opponent to bang into him, that's a black flag.'
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