Who had it on their bingo card that it would bet the fifth race of the season when Max Verstappen’s driving would come under scrutiny?
To be fair to Verstappen, it wasn’t for something wild or reckless, or that overly impacted another driver’s potential race result in the end, but it was very much about his interpretation of the rules, and the fact that both he and Red Bull felt particularly hard done by, despite what appears to be generally widespread acceptance that the stewards made the right call.
When Oscar Piastri got a better launch off the line than Verstappen, the polesitter looked to move across and close the door on the relatively short run to Turn 1, but did not have the ability to do so as the McLaren pulled alongside.
Verstappen’s next best chance was to outbrake Piastri at the first corner, but again the advantage that Piastri gained on the initial part of the start meant Verstappen had to take a lot more speed than the Australian toward the first corner to be anywhere near being able to claim that he was ahead at the apex.
Piastri nailed his braking point and used all of the track. Verstappen carried more speed and never looked like making the corner, but all he was looking for was the ability to say his car was ahead at the apex of Turn 1 and therefore if Piastri did not leave him space on the exit then he was entitled to go off track.
It’s a classic Verstappen move, but it’s also one that is still allowed due to the wording of the Driving Standards Guidelines that the stewards operate by. In this case, the stewards were pretty clear with their viewpoint on the matter.
“The stewards … determined that Car 81 [Piastri] had its front axle at least alongside the mirror of Car 1 [Verstappen] prior to and at the apex of corner 1 when trying to overtake Car 1 on the inside. In fact, Car 81 was alongside Car 1 at the apex.
“Based on the Driver’s Standards Guidelines, it was therefore Car 81’s corner and he was entitled to be given room.
“Car 1 then left the track and gained a lasting advantage that was not given back. He stayed in front of Car 81 and sought to build on the advantage.”
The end result was a 5s time penalty, and although Verstappen tried to escape up the road to negate it, he didn’t have the pace and lost the lead to Piastri through the pit stop phase.
As an incident that happened on the opening lap, Verstappen had plenty of time to ponder it during the rest of the race, and returned to the grid after finishing second with a clear stance. He felt hard done by, but was not going to give the FIA the chance to sanction him for potentially saying so.
“I’m going to keep it quite short,” Verstappen said immediately getting out of the car. “I just want to say a big thank you to the fans here in Jeddah. It’s been a great weekend. I love the track and, yeah, the rest is what it is. I’m looking forward to Miami. So I’ll see you there.”
And with that, he was gone. Even later in the FIA press conference — and all of the television interviews he did prior to that — he would not be drawn on the incident.
“Start happened, Turn 1 happened, and suddenly it was lap 50,” he said. “It just all went super fast. The problem is that I cannot share my opinion about it because I might get penalized also, so it’s better not to speak about it.
“I think it’s better not to talk about it. Anything I say or try to say about it might get me in trouble.”
Verstappen insisted at one stage that his stance was about the way words can be twisted and how social media might react to comments, but also then referenced the long list of potential charges that could be leveled at him by the governing body for being overly critical toward it.
It was a flashback to last year, and the same could be said for the way Red Bull reacted, trying to defend Verstappen when it appeared there was little to get angry about.
“I thought it was very harsh,” team principal Christian Horner said, after bringing a still image from Verstappen’s onboard camera with him to his press briefing.
“We didn’t concede the position because we didn’t believe that he’d done anything wrong. You can quite clearly see at the apex of the corner, we believe that Max is clearly ahead. The rules of engagement they’ve discussed previously and it was a very harsh decision.
“If we’d have given it up, the problem is you then obviously run in the dirty air as well. You could have dropped back behind, the problem is you then are at risk with George [Russell]. The best thing to do was, at that point, ‘We got the penalty, get your head down, keep going.’”
The image that Horner was referencing didn’t definitively show where the apex of the corner was, but it did show Piastri’s right front wheel to be clearly ahead of Verstappen’s wing mirror, meeting the criteria set out in the guidelines that would give the McLaren the right to the corner. Horner effectively dug himself a hole trying to defend his driver, as he again brought up the guidelines and then pointed to an image that actually proved him wrong.
“They’ve both gone in at the same speed, Oscar’s run deep into the corner, Max can’t just disappear at this point in time, so perhaps these rules need a re-look-at. I don’t know what happened to let them race on the first lap, that just seemed to have been abandoned.
“We felt we hadn’t really done anything wrong. First corner, racing incident, two cars go in, I don’t know where he’s supposed to go. At this point, he can’t just vanish.
“Oscar’s had a good start, Max has had an average start, they’ve ended up [fighting]. But as per their [stewards’ decision], front wheel ahead has to be at least in line with the mirror. It’s very, very, very, very close.”
It shouldn’t really be a big talking point, because the penalty shouldn’t be so strongly opposed. There were so few people that agreed with Red Bull’s point of view, with one team principal — not McLaren’s — stating in response, “Let it go; he was never making that corner.”
There are times Verstappen’s reputation precedes him and he appears to come under extra scrutiny, and there are others where he drives to the letter of the law and should not be criticized for that.
In this case, his attempt at using the rules to his advantage was absolutely fine, but it didn’t come off. While you can make a case in defense of Verstappen that he won’t have had time to analyze and review the incident when he spoke, Horner and Red Bull clearly had. Surely the team principal knew he didn’t really have an argument.
But with such instability and uncertainty over Verstappen’s future, even hinting that the driver could have been in the wrong is totally out of the question. And so we are here again, with a relatively small incident that was easily dealt with at the time, being turned into a point of contention that highlights Verstappen’s driving once again.
This was a minor infringement, but the reaction points to there being plenty more controversies as Verstappen’s title defense comes under increasing threat this year.
We’ve had some amazing moments together that I’ll always remember. Thank you, Checo! 
