Verstappen must control road rage to cement legacy as a great

There was no justification for Max Verstappen's rash and futile act of retribution at the Spanish Grand Prix, when he deliberately drove into the side of George Russell's car.

- Giles Richards

The world champion knows it and yesterday he admitted as much with something of a mea culpa on social media. Yet it also must be considered that it is part and parcel of what makes Verstappen so competitive, albeit in this case in an entirely unedifying and self-defeating fashion.

Angry and frustrated at a sequence of events in Barcelona, including having to cede a place to Russell, Verstappen surrendered to his baser instincts.

Having pulled over to give the place to Russell, he clearly then felt a point had to be made and accelerated back up the inside to collide with the Mercedes.

He took a 10-second penalty, dropping him to 10th, putting him 49 points behind the championship leader Oscar Piastri, with three points added to his licence. One more penalty and he will receive a one-race ban.

He conceded yesterday that he was "frustrated", his emotions were running high and that the move was "not right and shouldn't have happened".

Clearly he had had time to cool down and gain some perspective from what was a moment of madness, but even given the chain of events - which were hardly rage-inducing stuff - this was still shocking from an F1 veteran at 27 years old and a four-time world champion. It was the purposeless anger that really caught the eye, rather than the severity of the action itself.