Verstappen reaction shows 'the greats need to feel like the world’s against them' - Wolff

Mercedes team principal Toto Wolff believes Max Verstappen’s reaction to his situation with George Russell at the Spanish Grand Prix is a sign of how great drivers need to feel like they are facing adversity.

Verstappen was handed a time penalty and three penalty points on his license for colliding with Russell, having been audibly frustrated at a Red Bull request to give up a position to the Mercedes driver. That followed a late safety car that undid Verstappen and the team’s good strategic work trying to fight McLaren for victory and cost him a podium, and Wolff says Verstappen’s initial reluctance to address the incident is due to a trait often seen in top athletes.

“There’s a pattern that the great ones, whether it’s in motor racing or in other sports, you just need to have the world against you, and then [you can] perform at the highest possible levels,” Wolff said.

“And that’s why sometimes these greats don’t recognize that actually the world is not against you, you have made a mistake, or you have screwed up, etc etc. And we haven’t seen any of these moments with Max for many years now. The year 2021, that happened, and I don’t know where it comes from.”

Last week, Verstappen took to social media to say that the incident “was not right and shouldn’t have happened” having become further frustrated by his team’s viewpoint that he needed to hand the position to Russell after earlier contact at Turn 1.

With the stewards ultimately deciding later in the race that Verstappen was within his rights to remain ahead of Russell, Red Bull team principal Christian Horner believes the situation could have been helped by more direction from race control.

“I think that's where it would be nice, as the referee, as a race director, to either say play on or you need to give it back,” Horner said. “I think it's very hard for the team, subjectively, to try and make that call because you're going on historical precedence. You’re looking at what you have in front of you, and you're trying to pre-empt what the stewards and the race directors are thinking.

“So I think it would be beneficial to the teams, in that instance, for the race director to make that call and say you either give it back or you get a penalty, rather than having to try and second-guess what the stewards are going to think.”