F1 in Spain: Now that was a lapse in judgment

Formula 1 held its annual Spanish Grand Prix this past weekend at the Catalunya circuit near Barcelona. It’s a good place to test a modern F1 car, as you need great aerodynamics to be fast around here, especially now that the awkward chicanes are gone. You also need good mechanical grip. Races used to be processional here, but the re-profiled turn 10 and the flat-out nature of the last turn have changed all that.

This was to be the weekend of new front wings, the result of a “technical directive” meant to stop excessive flexing as part of the sport’s ongoing antipathy toward creatively movable aerodynamics outside a tightly described domain. The competitive order would be reset, some hoped, as their rivals would be forced to give up unfair advantages. In fact, the new wings turned out to be a nothingburger. McLaren’s advantage remains, and that was clear on a circuit that tests every aspect of a racing car.

But there’s only one story that anyone really cares about after Spain, and it’s the one about Red Bull’s Max Verstappen. For much of the race, Verstappen held onto third place, behind the too-fast McLarens. This required using one more set of tires than they did, and for his last stint, all that was left for the Red Bull driver was a set of the too-hard compound, giving him little in the way of grip.

With a set of softs or the preferred mediums, the late race safety car restart could have been a chance for Verstappen to step higher onto the podium. Instead, it left him vulnerable to Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc and Mercedes’ George Russell. A big wobble under power out of turn 13 was expertly saved by Verstappen, leaving no doubt about his otherworldly level of car control. But it also gave Leclerc the chance he needed to get alongside and then past.

Russell was next, at turn 1, giving Verstappen what looked like a dose of his own medicine. The Red Bull was forced to use the escape road and maintained his position before being told by his team to give the place back. Already on the back foot, this was too much, he told his race engineer. “But that’s the rules,” replied the laconic Gianpiero Lambiase.

Verstappen was tight-lipped about the incident following the race but has since said it was “a move that was not right and shouldn’t have happened.”

Credit: Mark Thompson/Getty Images

Verstappen slowed to let Russell through, then sped up into turn 4, opening up his steering and colliding with the Mercedes. Call it petulance or frustration; it was an inexcusable lapse of judgment from a driver. Using one’s car as a weapon against another competitor on track is unacceptable, and the 10-second penalty that Verstappen earned as a result dropped him to 10th place at the end, ruining his own race more than anyone else’s.

We all have days we’re not proud of, when we don’t control our worst emotions. And I think that when he looks back on Sunday, it won’t be a Grand Prix that Max Verstappen is proud of.

The post-mortem would have been quite fast, as this year, the teams all have access to a new content delivery system from Globant that provides onboard video, audio, and some telemetry. That means you can really see both sides of an argument to get a little perspective, all through an iOS-like interface. On that note, the Globant team is keen to talk, so if you have any technical questions about how they provide all that data to the teams at the track, please drop them in the comments, and we’ll address them in a separate article.

Sadly, Verstappen is not the only multiple-time world champion to succumb to such behavior. Michael Schumacher, Ayrton Senna, and Sebastian Vettel have 14 championships between them, and each blotted their copybooks on more than one occasion. Don’t think it’s required to get to the top, though; I’ve never once seen Lewis Hamilton lose it like that, and it will be a while before anyone has as many wins as Sir Lewis.