George Russell says Max Verstappen threatened to crash him during last week’s Qatar Grand Prix.
Verstappen was unhappy with Russell after the qualifying session. Russell felt he was impeded by Verstappen driving slowly after Verstappen had completed his qualifying lap and complained in a meeting with the stewards. Verstappen, who had qualified first ahead of Russell in second, was given a one-place grid penalty and dropped to second on the grid behind Russell.
Thursday in Abu Dhabi, Russell said that Verstappen told him after the stewards meeting that “he was going to purposefully go out of his way to crash into me and ‘put me on my f****** head in the wall.'”
From Racer:
“People have been bullied by Max for years now, and you can’t question his driving abilities. But he cannot deal with adversity. Whenever anything has gone against him — Jeddah ’21, Brazil ’21 — he lashes out. Budapest this year, the very first race the car wasn’t dominant, crashing into Lewis [Hamilton], slamming his team…
“For me, those comments on Saturday night and Sunday were totally disrespectful and unnecessary. Because what happens on track, we fight hard, that’s part of racing. What happens in the stewards’ room, you fight hard, but it’s never personal. But he’s taken it too far now.”
Fully recounting the interaction between the two, Russell added: “[He said it] to me privately, straight out of the stewards. He said, ‘I don’t know why you would want to screw me like this. I’m so disappointed in you. I was going to not even race you tomorrow, I was going to let you by, but now if I have to, I will purposely go out of my way to put you on your f****** head in the wall.’ So I don’t understand why he was so unnecessarily aggressive and violent in that regard.”
Verstappen said in Qatar that Russell was a different person in personal conversations than he was in front of the cameras and that “I can’t stand that.” He also said that he had “lost all respect” for Russell for advocating for a penalty for Verstappen.
Verstappen won the race in Qatar after he took the lead on the first lap. Russell fell to third on the opening lap behind Verstappen and Lando Norris and went on to finish fourth.
Verstappen wrapped up his fourth consecutive world championship on Nov. 24 in Las Vegas. That clinch came two races after Verstappen had been penalized twice for the way he raced Norris, his closest title rival, in the Mexico City Grand Prix.
