At the 2024 Qatar GP weekend, a new F1 rivalry brewed up—one which the community would never have anticipated. Max Verstappen and George Russell started going at each other’s throats, attacking each other personally for what the Mercedes driver did ahead of the Grand Prix race.
Russell allegedly went out of his way to ask the stewards to penalize Verstappen, which lost the Red Bull star his pole position. And after Verstappen called him out for being a hypocrite, Russell responded on Thursday, with a scathing attack, labeling him a ‘bully’. Guenther Steiner, however, doesn’t think this was a good idea.
“You pick your battles,” Steiner said on the Red Flags podcast. “And you’re not picking a battle with Max for a pole position and he’s beside you. Because he’s going to f*ck you over at the start. And that’s what he did, you know.”
max to de telegraaf about george calling him a bully:
“yes, but george is a bully. that he brings up all these kinds of things. he is just a loser. he lies and sticks all kinds of things together that are not correct. i only gave my opinion about his behaviour to the stewards.… pic.twitter.com/GSDzke2u6V
— nini (@SCUDERIAFEMBOY) December 5, 2024
Russell and Verstappen were both on an out-lap in Qatar when the Dutchman was deemed to be driving ‘dangerously slow’. Nothing had happened initially, and Verstappen celebrated his first pole since the Austrian GP in June. But after Russell’s discussion with the FIA, stewards handed Verstappen a one-place grid penalty. It promoted Russell to P1 instead.
At the end of the day, it didn’t matter because Verstappen won the outing quite comfortably. But he lost respect for Russell and exposed him as someone being nice just in front of the cameras. According to Steiner, Russell should have let it be. Because the gains he had made momentarily, weren’t significant enough to make a lifelong enemy out of the four-time World Champion.
Russell explains why he stood up to Verstappen
This war of words between the duo certainly escalated in the days after the Grand Prix. Russell has now himself come on record to sling allegations of his own towards the 27-year-old.
Russell insisted that he had been threatened by the Red Bull driver of consequences in the race. “Now he’s made it personal and someone needs to stand up to a bully like this. And so far people have let him get away with murder,” he said.
The paddock has certainly been divisive about Verstappen’s aggressive driving style of late. This new incident is only going to spark more debate within the paddock. But it is the aggression off the track that Russell doesn’t particularly like.
Denouncing Verstappen’s “unnecessary anger and borderline violence,” Russell revealed that the Dutchman had also threatened to put his “head through the wall” but this has been denied by the #1 driver.
