Max Verstappen should have been hit with a race ban for his astonishing shunt on George Russell during the 2025 Formula 1 Spanish Grand Prix, according to an F1 expert.
The Red Bull driver drove his RB21 car into the side of Russell’s Mercedes W16 in the final laps of Sunday’s race at the Circuit Barcelona de Catalunya. Remarkably, Russell did not sustain terminal damage to his car and came home in fourth place, while Verstappen was demoted to 10th after he was slapped with a 10-second penalty by the stewards.
The four-time champion appeared to take responsibility for the collision, admitting the move was “not right” in a post on his Instagram account. The stewards also added three penalty points to the Dutchman’s superlicence, taking him to 11 – perilously close to the 12 which triggers a one-race ban.
But speaking on the Total Motorsport F1 Show, Ewan Gale and Brandon Sutton both felt the move was likely to be deliberate and as such, the 27-year-old should’ve received a more severe penalty from the race stewards.
“My instant reaction was race ban, you can’t go around crashing into people deliberately in a sport where the risk is ultimate,” Gale said. “We have fatalities in the sport. I don’t think you can be putting another driver’s safety at risk like that. It was a low-energy impact, low-speed collision, so maybe that’s a little bit drastic.
“But the comparison to make is George Russell had a harsher penalty for cutting the corner in Monaco than Max Verstappen got for what is deemed an intentional crash in Barcelona.
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“The question I would ask is should the FIA, race control and the stewards have waited until the end of the race to get Verstappen and Russell in the stewards’ room before making a decision on the penalty? Because now it feels like their hands are tied and they can’t go back and retrospectively address it now that the penalty has been given, and Verstappen apologised for what seems like an intentional ram.”
Rosberg was right to call for black flag
Former world champion Nico Rosberg claimed during Sky Sports F1’s race commentary that Verstappen deserved a black flag for the maneouvre, which caused a debate amongst F1 fans and media professionals.
Total Motorsport’s F1 expert Sutton was clear in his mind that the stewards missed a divine opportunity to make an example of Verstappen’s behaviour and hand him the black flag because there was no precedent.
“Only he will know if he deliberately tried to crash into Russell, but I can’t think of another explanation for that. Given that he let him get ahead and tried to get him back going into the corner, like [Lewis] Hamilton did at Spa in 2008, it doesn’t really work though,” he said.
“Based on his statement on Instagram, it’s kind of looking that way [intentional]. He should’ve definitely been [punished more severely], I don’t care what speed it is, whether it’s free practice, qualifying or whatever. If you’re trying to crash into a competitor and use your car as a weapon, you need to make an example of that.”
He later added: “I do think that, as you said Ewan, there’s no precedent. But that’s exactly why they could have black-flagged him [Verstappen]. There’s nothing like this in the past for Red Bull to turn around and say ‘actually, this happened’.
“The FIA could’ve also turned around and said the black flag is too much. We’ve seen this from Verstappen in the past in Saudi Arabia where the data confirmed he brake-tested Hamilton, we even had Helmut Marko admit it.
“On that occasion he got away with the 10-second penalty, but I don’t think the penalty would’ve done anything for him. The chance he was taking, he clearly didn’t care about it in that moment. In Verstappen’s mind, he clearly he wanted to make a point. He knows he’s probably not going to win the title this year anyway, so I don’t think he would’ve cared too much.”
