Max Verstappen showed his worst side in a shocking end to the Spanish Grand Prix.
The Dutchman was eventually given a ten second penalty for hitting George Russell in dramatic closing scenes.
A late retirement from Mercedes Kimi Antonelli brought out a safety car, ruining Verstappen’s three stop strategy, leaving him as a sitting duck at the restart.
The reigning four-time world champion lost traction when racing resumed and nearly span out at the final corner only for Ferrari’s Charles Leclerc to pass him into third.
The two cars needlessly touched during the overtake, and then at turn one Russell also made his way past Verstappen, albeit with contact down the inside.
Verstappen was forced into the run off and came out ahead of Russell, who then tried again into turn four, only for the former to seemingly intentionally hit the latter while he passed.
Commentator and 2016 champion Nico Rosberg was in shock, saying: “Wow that’s bad, bad, bad, that’s seriously bad.
“He just rammed him full on, he needs to be black flagged [disqualified], there’s no other way.
“He needs to get black flagged, he just crashed into Russell on purpose, that was horrible.”
Verstappen’s race engineer Gianpiero Lambiase told his driver to let Russell back past, only for the Dutchman to furiously protest on team radio.
“Come on Max stop talking nonsense, what rubbish he is talking,” Rosberg said in response.
“In Max’s eyes he was 100 per cent right…he said [to his team] watch this I’m going to show you what he did.
“You slow down to crash into another driver, that’s really bad.”
Race stewards quickly announced they were investigating the incident and then gave Verstappen a ten second penalty, dropping him from fifth to tenth.
Rosberg responded: “That’s a very lenient one from my point of view.”
Verstappen was later asked by Sky Sports if the move on Russell was intentional, but blunty said: “Does it matter?”
He added: “I prefer to speak about the race, than just one single moment.”
The race was won by Oscar Piastri from teammate Lando Norris but that was just a sideshow.
All three were asked about Verstappen’s behaviour post-race but said they didn’t see it.
Then when the race highlights were shown in the top three green room, Norris hilariously commented: “I’ve done that before in Mario Kart.”
Giving his view in the media pen, Russell said: “I was as surprised as you guys were, I’ve seen those kind of moves before on games and go-karting but never in F1.
“Ultimately we came home in fourth and him tenth so I don’t really know what was going through his mind. It felt deliberate in the moment.
“Max is such an amazing driver and so many people look up to him so it’s a shame that something like that continues to occur, it seems unnecessary and it never seems to benefit himself.”
