Contributors: Robert Percy, Danny Herbert
Has the next big Formula 1 rivalry already begun?
The prospect of Max Verstappen and George Russell battling it out on track tooth and nail in the not-so-distant future, accompanied by feisty radio messages and spicy back-and-forths in the cooldown room is just too exciting to put into words!
We’ve seen fiery relationships in the recent past between Verstappen and his fellow title protagonists. We’ve also seen some conflict between Verstappen and Russell in the past. The Red Bull driver raged at the Mercedes driver in the pit lane following the 2023 Azerbaijan Grand Prix after they made contact in the sprint race, for example.
The battles between Verstappen and his rivals are what have kept a lot of the intrigue alive during the era of his dominance.
However, the recent comments Verstappen and Russell made against each other are the ones that have really stuck. The verbal barbs between the two of them reached the point where they could very easily have come from a parody account. Our social media timelines looked like an argument in and of itself, with accusations thrown all around the paddock!
The drama kicked off in Qatar, where Verstappen appeared to impede Russell in qualifying through a fast right-hander. But with it soon becoming obvious that both drivers were on non-push laps, we all thought it was a non-issue. How wrong we all were!
Verstappen would be awarded a one-place grid penalty a few hours after the session’s conclusion. This is a relatively rare punishment in F1; it was last seen in the 2016 German Grand Prix when Nico Hulkenberg’s Force India was fitted with the wrong tyres in qualifying. Verstappen would therefore start the Grand Prix on the dirty side of the grid, with Russell in pole position on the clean side.
Russell had to settle for 4th after Verstappen took the lead on the first lap and held onto that lead to win, through three safety car restarts.
Where it really all kicked off, though, was in the run-up to the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix at the end of the season. Verstappen claimed Russell deliberately tried to, in his words, “screw me over” in the stewards’ room in Qatar and that he’d lost “all respect” for Russell. What followed was even more extraordinary.
Russell didn’t take this quietly. He responded by accusing Verstappen of “bullying” himself and other drivers “for years”. He also accused Verstappen of threatening to “put me on my f*****g head in the wall” and implied that if Abu Dhabi 2021’s title situation had been reversed, Michael Masi would be fearing for his life.
Red Bull Racing’s team principal Christian Horner couldn’t help but weigh in, too. He called Russell’s push for a grid penalty for Verstappen something “based on hysterics from George… who has been quite hysterical this weekend.”
Mercedes CEO and team principal Toto Wolff then took the unprecedented call to join Russell in the driver’s media conference in Mercedes’ hospitality suite. Wolff pulled no punches when talking about his rival team principal, calling Horner a “yapping little terrier.” This would soon be followed with a typical Horner response in the official press conference. “I’d rather be a terrier than a wolf,” he remarked, likely giving Netflix yet another brilliantly quotable moment for the next series of Drive To Survive.
Throughout this final race weekend of the season, the close media coverage that F1 is customary to these days would keep the ‘quotable quotes’ coming and the story’s flame well and truly alight.
The Verstappen and Russell intrigue would remain even in the drivers’ end-of-season dinner. Russell allegedly ran late, allowing the other drivers to play a practical joke on the pair. They positioned the only remaining seat as the one right next to Verstappen, something that Lando Norris captured in his Instagram post on the dinner. Interestingly, Verstappen’s old rival Lewis Hamilton organized the end-of-season dinner, while Hamilton’s former teammate Valtteri Bottas picked up the bill!
It’s probably for the best that this rivalry didn’t kick off earlier in the season. It certainly didn’t bring the nicest of undertones with it. The remarks being thrown around publicly by Verstappen, Russell and their respective team bosses weren’t nice to hear at times, even if they have added a lot of drama and intrigue to the closing stages of the season.
A question we have been asked quite a bit since is whether this battle could create on-track problems moving forward. Well, next year is a new season. Holidays will have been had and Christmas and New Year celebrated. This might be a rather well-timed rest period for our aforementioned drivers and team principals.
Sport wouldn’t be sport without its rivalries. Rivalries create intrigue, and with intrigue comes a spectacle. This is what F1 really has always been about, and what Liberty Media wants F1 to be more like in the future. You want to create a spectacle that the casual fan will remember for years to come. A rivalry like the one Verstappen and Russell are set to carry on next year will only add to what’s being hyped by fans and pundits alike as potentially one of the best F1 seasons ever.
There’s only one thing we can be sure of going into the 2025 season. As the great Murray Walker often used to say, anything can happen in Formula 1 and it usually does! The only way we’ll know how much a Verstappen vs Russell rivalry will affect how the season plays out is to wait and see.
Leave a comment