Max Verstappen will need to be on his best behaviour for most of this season, with a race ban hanging over his head even after the next two races.

Verstappen is just a single penalty point away from picking up an automatic race ban, having accumulated 11 in the past 12-month period, and must get through the next two races without a single blemish.

Max Verstappen’s immediate race ban threat

The rules dictate that any driver who picks up 12 penalty points on their FIA Super Licence will be automatically banned from the following race weekend, and it’s the Red Bull driver who teeters on that number.

Since the introduction of the penalty points system in 2014, just one driver has reached that 12-point mark. Last year, Kevin Magnussen reached 12 points over the Italian Grand Prix weekend and, as a consequence, was banned from racing the following weekend in Azerbaijan.

Previously, Pierre Gasly had come perilously close to reaching a ban during the 2022 season before he managed to start shedding some of his accumulated 10 penalty points.

It’s Verstappen who now needs to get through the next two race weekends without even a single penalty point accrued, with the first of his penalty points not due to come off his licence until June 30th, the day after the Austrian Grand Prix.

Why is Max Verstappen on the verge of a possible F1 race ban?

Verstappen’s current 11 points began accumulation in last year’s Austrian Grand Prix when he picked up two points for his part in the contentious collision between himself and McLaren’s Lando Norris in the closing stages of the race.

In the Mexico City Grand Prix last October, he picked up a further two points for forcing Norris off track during their battle at the Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez – a moment which resulted in a time penalty, and plenty of outcry as their title fight reached its peak.

During the Sprint race at the Sao Paolo Grand Prix, he picked up a single point for driving under the minimum Virtual Safety Car delta time in a misjudgment of his resumption speed after the VSC.

A few weeks later, he picked up another single point for driving unnecessarily slowly on a cooldown lap during qualifying for the Qatar Grand Prix – an incident that enraged Verstappen after also being given a grid penalty as George Russell argued the situation with the stewards.

In Abu Dhabi a week later, Verstappen was given two penalty points for causing a collision with Oscar Piastri at the first corner of the race, while the coup de grace came in the last round in Spain when he was involved in a collision with Russell in a hot-headed moment which saw him accelerate to block the Mercedes driver through Turn 5.

Having reached 11 points, Verstappen now must complete the Canadian and Austrian Grand Prix weekends completely cleanly. If he can do so, he will drop back down to nine points – a situation which will remain in place until October 27th, the day after this year’s Mexico City Grand Prix.

This means Verstappen will need to stay very well-behaved for a full nine race weekends, even after the initial two points drop away – as shown last week in Spain, it is possible to pick up three penalty points in one go for particularly egregious transgressions.

What will Red Bull do if Max Verstappen picks up an F1 race ban?

If Verstappen does hit the 12 points and triggers a race ban, it would almost certainly spell an end to this year’s championship fight, given that he’s already 49 points away from the championship lead as the season’s halfway point hoves into view.

But what it could do is give Red Bull clarity on whether or not to keep pushing this year’s car development for much longer, as the potential gains for the revolutionary F1 2026 regulations are huge.

Verstappen, although he hasn’t said so about this particular scenario, may even quite welcome the idea of a race ban, given that it could give him some extra time at home with his newborn baby and his partner Kelly, as well as it wiping his Super Licence clean upon his return.

Depending on the timing of a ban, it could even free him up to take part in another racing category if he felt like it, given he recently was awarded an FIA platinum licence that opens up the possibility of racing in endurance events such as the Spa 24 Hours.

But, assuming Verstappen will be doing his utmost to avoid an F1 race ban and continue pushing for the title against the two McLaren drivers, picking up a race ban would thus leave Red Bull with some considerations to make.

It’s expected that its two Racing Bulls drivers Liam Lawson and Isack Hadjar would be the two contenders for Verstappen’s seat in this scenario – Lawson having prior experience of the car and the team from his two race weekends with Red Bull at the start of the season, while Hadjar has impressed as a complete rookie this season.

Whichever one is promoted in the event of a Verstappen ban would leave a space open at Racing Bulls. The likely candidate for this is Red Bull/Honda junior Ayumu Iwasa, who has tested for Racing Bulls and drove Verstappen’s Red Bull RB21 in FP1 in Bahrain earlier this year.

However, with F2 driver Arvid Lindblad earning a special FIA dispensation to be granted his FIA Super Licence two months before his 18th birthday, the British-Swedish driver has become an option for any vacant seat at either Red Bull team, although it’s understood there’s no desire at this point to rush him into a seat.

Will Max Verstappen race any differently, given the race ban threat?

Assuming Verstappen really doesn’t want to pick up a race ban, it’s likely the Dutch driver will keep his head down and try to have clean weekends – after all, Verstappen may have expressed his unhappiness over the FIA’s strict anti-swearing regulations since their formalisation, but he hasn’t set about trying to test those limits out.

Given his comprehensive understanding of the regulations, Verstappen knows what he can and can’t do if he wants to stay on the right side of things and, as such, his fate is in his hands.

What will be interesting to observe is whether his rivals try to take advantage of this and race him differently in a bid to see whether Verstappen backs down in situations where he usually wouldn’t, knowing that, if he doesn’t, he risks being found at fault for any possible collisions.

Of all the drivers on the grid, it’s the uncompromising and unflinching Verstappen who would appear most likely to have no qualms about taking his medicine if a race ban meant staying true to his principles. As such, it’s not difficult to imagine that what other drivers may be cowed by – the prospect of an ignominious race ban – Verstappen could simply view as the cost of doing business.

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