George Russell and Max Verstappen’s furious F1 row, abusive emails and damaged friendship
It’s the biggest driver beef in Formula 1 since Max Verstappen and his epic and bad-tempered 2021 title tussle with Lewis Hamilton.
And once again the Dutchman is involved in a war of words with a rival. This time, it’s Hamilton’s former team-mate George Russell in his crosshairs, following a bitter row at the end of last season which looks to have damaged their relationship, possibly beyond repair.
“We haven’t spoken,” Mercedes star Russell said this week when asked if they have patched things up since things got heated in the Middle East last December. And he told BBC Radio 5 Live: “I’ve got not intention, to be honest. Some things were out of line at the end of last year. That was then, but we’re not going to go back to being best mates, that’s for sure.”
Red Bull racer Verstappen also declined to comment too much on the matter and said: “Honestly, I have no intention of continuing any type of beef in February.” Whether or not he still has that attitude in March, when he will start fighting with Russell again on track, remains to be seen.
It all began at the Qatar Grand Prix, the penultimate round of the 2024 season, when Verstappen was stripped of pole position for getting in Russell’s way during qualifying.
He went on to win the race anyway, but was clearly furious about the way his Mercedes rival had behaved during the stewards’ hearing over the incident, saying he had “lost all respect” for Russell.
The latter admitted he feared Verstappen would ram into him on purpose during the race following an angry confrontation following that hearing. The Brit initially declined to share exactly what had been said between them, but that all changed a week later when things truly boiled over in Abu Dhabi.
Verstappen lit the fuse in the final FIA press conference of the season, accusing his British rival of lying to the stewards in order to get him penalised. And that was the final straw for both Russell and his boss Toto Wolff – the latter gatecrashing his driver’s scheduled session with written media to take aim at both Verstappen, his Red Bull team and rival team principal Christian Horner.
Russell called Verstappen’s public outburst “a personal attack” and vowed: “I’m not going to take it.” He then claimed that the Red Bull racer had told him that he was going to “put my “f***ing head in the wall”, hence why he had been concerned that he would be targeted on track.
There were no such flashpoints in the final race of the season, but it emerged that they had stayed apart at the traditional drivers’ dinner in Abu Dhabi. Lando Norris confirmed as much on social media as he joked: “Yes, the two you’re thinking about were sat as far away from each other as possible.”
Things quietened down during the off-season with no interviews being held to provoke further comments from either driver. But, naturally, it was brought up again on the first media day of 2025 this week, in the hours building up to the F1 75 Live season launch event at London’s O2 Arena on Tuesday.
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Both drivers said they weren’t interested in holding clear-the-air talks with each other. But Russell was more talkative than his rival on the subject and revealed that some of his Mercedes colleagues had received angry emails from Verstappen’s loyal Dutch fans over the conflict.
Jack Whitehall’s jokes about the feud during the F1 75 Live show were all in good fun, but Russell’s “we’re not going to go back to being best mates” comment made it clear that this whole mess has had a lasting impact on their relationship. Both F1 stars are 27 years old and have been in (mostly) friendly competition with each other since their junior karting days.
It will certainly be worth keeping an eye on how they race against each other on track over the course of the 24 Grands Prix and six Sprint races to come in 2025.
And who knows? With Wolff still keen on the idea of luring Verstappen to Mercedes in the future, perhaps we’ll one day get a real blockbuster of a driver pairing.
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