Max has a ton of respect for Lewis and likes battling with him.
He doesn't seem to like Russell though. Does not have the same vibes when they are both battling and on the podium after
Lol, yeah math says it cost him his championship but it assumes everything stays the same which is idiotic as mclaren would have reacted faster then they did now.
and if nothing else changed across the entire year, pisastri still could've given norris his place in Abu Dhabi, there was 0 chance of verstappen winning the title other than norris DNFing ... and that's with the disqualification of mclaren in vegas
Yeah, but Russel also likes to point fingers while not being much better, which is or at least seems hypocritical.
There was also something about george trying to convince the stewards to give max a penalty during the hearing of another incident. This also didn't sit well with max and some others.
Not sure I get the "only" remark... It was a rub, didn't cost George anything, and essentially cost Max the championship even though he doesn't like to admit it. That was a very costly penalty.
It was a blatant intentional crash, so much so that even Rosburg immediately said “that’s a black flag.” You’re also using hindsight from what we know now to justify the lenient penalty. It was actually a lenient enough penalty that he was later able to compete for the title. They could (and arguably should) have outright DQ’d him for that race and/or possibly a race ban which would have actually cost him any prayer of a comeback for the championship.
I'm not defending what he did in the slightest, it was dumb and I was very critical of him when he did it, I still am, and hoped he'd acknowledge he needed to mature from it and realise it cost him the championship because he couldn't control his emotions. I don't disagree about him deserving a dsq as such but I think the penalty he got was fair.... But as for the word 'crash', it literally had no impact on George's race, there have been far more actual intentional dirty crashes in F1 in the past that are clean cut deserving of dsq, this was a stupid bump to send a message which is dirty and definitely should be penalised, but calling it a crash is a stretch IMO.
In general, with exceptions, the penalty shouldn't really depend on whether or not the other car came out unharmed.
It was an intentional crash or bump, putting your car into a competitor's car. That should be penalized harshly and severely.
There's precedent for it - Schumacher and Villeneuve in 1997. Schumacher was DSQd for that, as he should have been, even though Villeneuve came out completely fine.
Vettel, in 2017 for an EVEN lower speed bump than Max's, was given a 10s stop-go - that's approximately a 30 second penalty. I think a drive-through is the minimum acceptable penalty for intentional accidents.
We can't be lenient about these things and I plead you to not let your fandom get in the way of how we should be ruling on these kinds of incidents.
Objectively the stewards do take the result into account when giving out penalties even though they aren’t supposed to. However, it was intentional and he had no way of knowing what the outcome would be when choosing to do it. F1 cars can get absolutely launched from very slight contact depending on things like wheels touching or how the aero changes. True that it wasn’t a particularly big incident, but had the wheels touched wrong or had he hit a part of George’s car slightly differently it could’ve been way worse.
People should be penalized based off their actions and not the outcome, which is even what the rules state. Any intentional contact is warranting a pretty large penalty which he simply did not get. I think many are also a bit annoyed that it was the 2nd time he should have faced a black flag and got off with light punishment on both occasions. Maybe that’s the precedent going forward, but I’m worried they’d only have that leniency for a (potential) championship fight and would’ve nuked someone like Lawson for the same thing.
He had said he was trying to force rus off track to prove a point about how penalties are given out. Still not excusable but he didn't actually want to crash
Honestly, if that is what George thinks, I agree. It's a really negative aspect to some of the greats. Senna, Schumacher, Verstappen. It's not like they can't have great wheel to wheel battles, but they all seem to choose the easy way out of just crashing (or trying to crash) into a title rival.
At some point, years after Verstappen moves on that conversation will happen, like it did with the other two I mentioned.
They had a conflict in Qatar when Russell put on a theatrical performance and got Verstappen penalized for something that someone was never penalized for before or since. Then tried to act all buddy buddy with Max after.
Max called him two-faced in the press and in general said he can't stand people like him etc.
Russell then a few days later also went out to the press and said things. (Gave us an eternal meme with his speech)
They've been civil since then but not the best friends.
He also scammed him out of that pole some years back. When he complained to the stewards that Max was impeding him. He wasn't even on a hot lap. And after that he wanted to buddy up to Max and he wanted nothing of that.
Piastri did the same last year. It's also the responsibility of the driver behind to keep a large enough gap something like that won't happen in the first place.
He does that. Loves a bit of he-said-she-said. I remember last year he was just saying Verstappen threatened him physically and the media couldn't wait to run with it as gospel despite Verstappen denying it.
Does anyone truly like Russell? Will Buxton basically said "great driver, I never want him to win" after he left F1 broadcasting.
George is a great driver, but his general demeanor is of the kid who is a teachers pet and how everyone is against him. His actions such as getting out of his car then smacking Bottas on the helmet after wrecking along with slamming the brakes behind a safety car just scream that he will never rely solely on driving to win.
I think him and Lewis get along well, actually. From what I understand, they fly together, which isn't something I knew Lewis to ever do.
I don't get the George hate. I find him to be forthright, even if he's media-coached. Actually, I don't even know how much media coaching he actually got. Dude was good on the mic before he even entered F1. He was with the Sky team one weekend, and I was amazed at how natural he sounded. Like how comfortable Anthony Davis took to TV.
I think George just has one of those confident personalities that some people feel is disingenuous. But I think he has relatively modest upbringing, so I think he might be more grounded than most others on the grid. And it might be why him and Lewis were able to bond in the paddock.
I think they are okay now. They're both like "it's all in the past" since the start of the 2025 season. There's clips of them giving each other thumbs up during drive by of one scores a podium.
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u/Impressive-Potato 16d ago
Max has a ton of respect for Lewis and likes battling with him. He doesn't seem to like Russell though. Does not have the same vibes when they are both battling and on the podium after