“He’s Still Doing It”: Damon Hill Pulls the 2021 Card on Max Verstappen for Sharp Retort on Critics

After the Mexican Grand Prix, where Max Verstappen incurred 20 seconds worth of time penalties, 1996 F1 world champion Damon Hill made some harsh comments regarding the Dutchman’s sportsmanship. This has now resulted in a war of words as Verstappen has dismissed whatever his critics have to say.

Following Verstappen’s dismissal, Hill further explained his standpoint and noted that it’s not the right attitude to have because if every driver on the grid had the same mentality as the 27-year-old, it would result in chaos and F1 wouldn’t be worth watching anymore. Hill also recalled a similar approach that Verstappen took in his title fight against Lewis Hamilton during the 2021 season when the Dutchman was extremely rough while racing against the seven-time champ.

“It’s not a vendetta against Max, it’s simply the people who watch the racing want it to be conducted in a reasonable and fair way. If everybody was doing this, it would be daft, it would be silly and it wouldn’t be worth watching,” Hill was quoted by Sky Sports F1.

“We like close racing. We’re here in Sao Paulo, this is where it all started a little bit in 2021, with him running deep into Turn 4, and everyone went, ‘hang on a minute, you can’t just run the guy clean off the road to defend.’ And he’s still doing it,” he added.

Verstappen’s defense against Hamilton in Brazil 2021 was similar to how he ran both himself and Lando Norris wide in Turn seven and eight in Mexico. However, Hamilton was still able to pull off the overtake in the next lap and went on to win the race.

Verstappen remains unlikely to change his approach

The criticism against Verstappen has not come from Hill alone. Plenty of experts and even his fellow drivers have raised concerns over how the Dutchman sometimes takes things over the limit, with Norris calling him “dangerous” in Mexico on his team radio. Hamilton, who was on the receiving end of Verstappen’s aggressive driving in 2021, also criticized him during the media interaction ahead of the Brazillian Grand Prix weekend.

“All you have to do is just go and look back and listen to some of my radio comments back in the day,” Hamilton said when asked to comment on Norris calling the Dutchman ‘dangerous’. “I don’t think you’re seeing much difference across the years from 2021 to now. It’s pretty much the same,” he added.

What’s interesting is that despite all the criticism of his approach to wheel-to-wheel racing, the triple-world champion has reiterated that he ‘knows what he is doing’, suggesting that he would not change his style of racing.