Should Max Verstappen’s collision with George Russell in Catalunya be considered worse than an ordinary racing mistake? @F1frog thinks so:
You can’t even measure a driver’s season for the amount of points they left on the table because similar mistakes can cost different numbers of points. Antonelli’s five second penalty in Vegas cost him nothing in the end, but it would have done had Piastri not been disqualified. That does not affect the magnitude of the error. Verstappen left almost zero points on the table in 2023 but we don’t know if he would have done if a top driver had been in a similar car.
In Japan 2025, for example, we wouldn’t have known Norris was leaving points on the table if Verstappen hadn’t been there to take them. So there was less opportunity for Verstappen to lose minor points in 2023 than there has been this season.
I think more impressive are seasons like Prost in 1986 and Alonso in 2012, and Verstappen in 2025, where there was a much smaller margin for underperformance costing points, and yet they very rarely did so. It is very hard to tell, of course, how much time is left on the table in any given race weekend.
Ultimately, the fact that Verstappen threw away nine points in Spain is no less of an error if he loses the title by eight points than if he had remained over 100 behind Piastri. So it is harsh that he would be judged more for it if he gets close, considering no other driver on the grid could have got close. However, he very much should be judged harshly for the error, because he threw away nine points when there was always a chance that it could come back to bite him, just like every time you throw away points with a poor qualifying lap or a mistake like Norris in Canada or Piastri in Azerbaijan.
But Spain 2025 was different, even if the points loss was similar, because of the manner with which he lost those points. Norris simply made a mistake in Canada, but Verstappen intentionally threw away those points in Spain. He deliberately chose to crash into another driver for no gain to himself (unlike when Prost, Senna and Schumacher did it), just out of red mist.
@F1frog
