Max Verstappen's Brazilian bust-up a throwback to fiery F1 clashes of old

We haven’t seen such behaviour from a Formula 1 driver in a long time

Max Verstappen sparked a bust-up with Esteban Ocon after sunday's race (Getty)

All in all, you wouldn’t call the Brazilian Grand Prix a dull affair. It resulted in a brilliant 10th victory of the season for Lewis Hamilton, who kept a cooler head than his closest rival and then resisted his counter-attack while driving an inferior car on inferior tyres. The success also cemented an impressive fifth consecutive world championship for the Mercedes constructors.

But the race will primarily be remembered for the incident between leader Max Verstappen and his old foe Esteban Ocon after their collision on lap 44. Meeting afterwards at the mandatory weigh-in, the angry Dutchman straight-armed the Frenchman three times before FIA officials jumped in to stop Ocon from retaliating.

We haven’t seen such behaviour from an F1 driver in a long time.

Back in 1982 at Hockenheim, Nelson Piquet collided in a chicane with Chile’s Eliseo Salazar, forcing both men to retire. The irate Brazilian attacked Salazar, who perhaps wisely kept his helmet on.

A year later, upstart F1 rookie Eddie Irvine had unlapped himself on the great Ayrton Senna during the Japanese GP at Suzuka, before Senna reasserted himself. Later the Brazilian went down to the Jordan hospitality unit to have a word, and ended up throwing a less than convincing punch at the insouciant Ulsterman, when the latter suggested that the reason he had repassed him was because at that particular point he wasn’t driving fast enough.

Neither incident really amounted to much. Neither was an all-out slugfest, like they used to have in midget and sprint car races over in the USA. But on one occasion at Spa, Nigel Mansell had taken Senna by the throat, and later at Magny-Cours Senna did likewise with Michael Schumacher. And after the German had deliberately taken Derek Warwick off in practice for a sportscar race at Nurburgring in 1991, the man who went on to become a seven-time world champion was extremely fortunate not to have been caught by the incensed Briton.

In a Formula 3 race at Crystal Palace back in 1970, upcoming James Hunt felled fellow competitor Dave Morgan with a blow after they clashed on the final lap, and later did likewise to a marshal who unwisely laid hand upon him while trying to help him away from the wreckage of his McLaren during the 1977 Canadian GP, where Hunt had collided with team-mate Jochen Mass. Adrenalin still flows in a floodtide at such moments, as the unfortunate marshal discovered.

Perhaps the most well-publicised incident of fisticuffs occurred the day after the controversial Indianapolis 500 in 1963, when Parnelli Jones won despite his car liberally coating the track with oil from a leaking tank. In his first visit to the Brickyard, Scottish star Jim Clark should have won for Lotus but because of the oil had to settle for second place.

The collision between Max Verstappen and Esteban Ocon sparked a furious outburst from the Dutchman (Getty)

Eddie Sachs, the much-loved Clown Prince of Racing, spun out on Jones’s oil, and raised the matter with him the following day in the foyer of the Speedway Motel. A hard man raised in the unforgiving bullrings and dirt tracks of the sprint car world, Jones warned Sachs a few times to zip it, before knocking him out. Sachs, ever the humorous self-promoter, had his photo in the next day’s papers, lying supposedly unconscious, with a rose in his lips. He and Jones would laugh about the incident in the coming months, before Sachs and Dave MacDonald were killed in a fiery crash on the second lap at Indianapolis the following year.

Having said that he hoped he didn’t find Ocon in the paddock – a clearly implied threat because that’s what he really did want to do – Verstappen bumped into him in the FIA garage and things predictably escalated quickly. Most professional drivers are pretty self-controlled and such incidents are usually dealt with verbally, and Verstappen’s reaction, while understandable, betrays his occasional immaturity.

Had he and Ocon been racing for position, it would have been deemed a 50/50 incident. But because Ocon was unlapping himself, the stewards penalised him 10s. He was at that stage faster than Verstappen, running on fresher, softer-compound tyres, so he was entitled to do what he did. Indeed, he had passed seven other drivers in that manner while fighting up from 18th on the grid to 10th before his pit stop. But with Verstappen as the leader, the stewards felt that Ocon had compromised him.

Equally, however, several more experienced drivers suggested afterwards that Verstappen could have widened his line and not cut in quite so aggressively, and avoided the debilitating contact altogether.

But that does not factor in the inherent enmity with Ocon.

Max Verstappen will now serve two days of community service (Getty)

In a statement explaining their verdict on the post-race altercation, stewards Emanuele Pirro, Silvia Bellot, Tim Mayer and Felipe Giaffone made it clear as experienced observers (and in the case of Pirro and Giaffone, competitors themselves) that they understood Verstappen’s feelings.

“Max Verstappen entered the FIA Weigh Bridge Garage, proceeded directly to Esteban Ocon and following a few words, started an altercation, pushing or hitting Ocon forcefully several times in the chest,” they said.

“The stewards understood from Max Verstappen that he was extremely upset by the incident on track during the race and accepted his explanation that it was not his original intent to strike Ocon, but that he was ‘triggered’ and caused him to lose his temper.

“While sympathetic to Verstappen’s passion, the stewards determined that it is the obligation of sportsmen at this level to act appropriately and as role models to other drivers at all levels and found that Verstappen failed in this respect.”

No further action was taken against Ocon, but it was generally expected that Verstappen was going to get the book thrown at him, and might face a grid penalty in Abu Dhabi at best, and possibly even a race ban. The decision to hand him a penalty of two days of public service, to be carried out within six months, caused general bemusement.

Such lenient punishment struck many as a distinctly odd solution, and one that is likely to have zero effect across the globe in dissuading other occasionally hot-headed drivers from repeating such an offence in moments of extreme emotion.