Max Verstappen is known for being ruthless on track with rivals having generated his fair share of controversies with rivals.
In 2024 he went head-to-head with Lando Norris for the Drivers’ Championship after McLaren made significant improvements to their car mid-season, with Red Bull’s advantage being slashed.
Verstappen started off the season strongly but the inroads made by McLaren coupled with Norris’ consistency led to a title battle at the end of the season, with the Dutchman seemingly pulling out all the stops to prevent him from losing a fourth on the bounce.
Norris and Verstappen collided on several occasions, with it coming to a head in Mexico when the stewards handed the Dutchman two 10-second time penalties for forcing the McLaren driver off track.
Verstappen would later get into a spat with George Russell during the Qatar GP weekend, when he accused the Mercedes driver of deliberately trying to earn him a penalty in qualifying for impeding.
Russell responded by saying he was not going to be ‘bullied’ by Verstappen, while Christian Horner and Toto Wolff also got involved in the argument. The feud is likely to be carried into the 2025 season and journalist Andrew Benson has lifted the lid on what that will entail in his column for BBC Sport.
Max Verstappen unbothered by George Russell feud
During an end-of-season dinner between all 20 drivers, Russell and Verstappen were left seats next to eachother, only for the Briton to move his to the opposite end of the table.
They would later be the subject of a few jokes at the F1 75 launch at the O2 by comedian Jack Whithall, which prompted a mixed response towards Verstappen from the crowd.
Benson believes Verstappen will be unbothered by his feud with Russell and has lifted the lid on how it will impact him on track.
“How he [Verstappen] gets on with someone out of the car has no bearing whatsoever on his behaviour in it – you only have to look at last year’s Mexico City Grand Prix and his two penalised incidents with Norris to see that,” wrote Benson.
“He is as ruthless as they come, and anyone who gets in his way will get the same treatment.
“How they respond to him off the track is a different question. But Verstappen doesn’t care about that either. Friendly, or not. Makes no difference to him. He’ll race them just has hard.”
Max Verstappen ‘hammering’ Red Bull over RB21 issues in meetings
Red Bull’s 2025 season has not got off to the smoothest start after a difficult test, in which Verstappen did not complete a race run.
Instead he was focused on optimising the setup of his RB21, but it was clear that the car was not optimised to his usual ‘pointy’ front end.
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Verstappen keeps ‘hammering’ Red Bull in meetings over issues he has found with kerbs and bumps, and the Milton Keynes outfit will need to address them promptly if they want to fight with McLaren.
Helmut Marko thinks McLaren is two tenths ahead of Red Bull based on their current form in testing, although there could be more to come in Melbourne as teams usually sandbag in testing.
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