What a D bag of a driver.
Yes, but this was at the last stint of the race or towards the end of the race with no fresh rubber for Max. He should have stayed out. The hards were the only fresh tires for Max and the hards take several laps to warm up.
Did his team told Max to stop or did he decide himself ? I haven't heard a conversation where his team told him only hard tyres were available. Max only found out at the restart, and went mad !
Team told Max to stop. Max found out once the pit stop was made and was in track and questioned what kind of tires he had.
For me, Red Bull was at fault for calling Max, knowing they had only a set of hard tyres and not telling him. They made the decision, not Max, it seems. I can understand why he went ballistic when he found out !!
Max was labeled the problem child by F1 and the media since he joined F1. He's been labeled the villain by F1 and the media and the trash Netflix puts out since 2020, extra bad in 2021. There have been multiple instances when the FIA and the Stewards have imposed penalties or rule changes to hurt Max or help his competitors just to stop him from winning. Yet Max has won 4 straight championships and is undeniably the best driver in F1. Overall, I would say he's handled the adversity pretty well.
can you please show this survey that goes out every year where the F1 drivers vote for the most likely driver to kill someone?
Max deserved the penalty. He blew a gasket and lost his mind and I don't blame him for being irate. A long list of events that went against him, each being more frustrating than the next. The team telling him to give the position back based on how the rules are was the last straw. I believe he deliberately crashed into George just to make a point about how the rules are written in 2025. There is a pretty big grey area that drivers often exploit when it comes to deliberately causing contact. Any time a driver dives into the corner and steals the apex and then drives their car to the edge of the track pushing another drive off the circuit is a deliberate move that could result in contact. And if often does. The inconsistency of how the rules are viewed and penalized means we might see a penalty on a few of those instances. Max is no exception, is has exploited this tactic many times. So has Lewis Hamilton. The biggest problem is the rules IMO. Always leave space, and this isn't an issue. Even if that was the rule, I still wouldn't impose a penalty for George going for the pass off the restart. There was a gap, he went for it. Slight contact, Max avoided and went around the bollards as he is supposed to, came out ahead and they race on. End of story. As for the way it went down, Max caused unnecessary contact with another car. He deserved a penalty. I'm honestly not sure that it wasn't a big FU to his team, and not the FIA/Stewards. His team didn't stand by their driver that was adamant he felt he was in the right in the T1 incident with Russell. Sometimes the team needs to support their driver on a subjective situation and live with a possible penalty.
Odd that Max himself wasn’t aware of his remaining tire situation. I mean, he’s always on top of just about everything. (I’m not trying to be sarcastic with this.)
So, Max has to get through 2 races without “earning” a penalty point and race ban. Then, he’ll still be within a major 3-point incident for another 9 races. I hadn’t realized how recent his point accumulation has been.
F1 drivers are busy enough with the job at hand, which requires all their concentration, to also keep a mental check of the tyre inventory in the pits !
To be sure…for most of them. But Max is the one that always seems to be aware of all sorts of things going on while still fully engaged on track.
As i said in my introductory post... Max is exceptional but dangerous... and thats why we watch... The guy isnt changing.
+1 -- no one going to mention that he squawked that Charles had hit him when he was the one who moved?
The DELIBERATE “chrome horn” is a NASCAR thing, but not really a part of normal open-wheel racing etiquette.