Following the scandal between Max Verstappen and Lando Norris in Austin, Lewis Hamilton said it was time for the FIA to change F1’s wheel-to-wheel racing rules.
But Hamilton said the issue could be traced back years, to the 2021 Brazilian Grand Prix, where he and Verstappen fought as an epic title battle neared its climax.
The two pilots have been out of the tour 4 Interagos while Hamilton is trying an external path and Verstappen is slow and braking.
Lewis Hamilton tells Fia, “I should do something.” Like Brazil, when his title F1 2024 Land Norris rivals remained on the tour 12, when Norris was trying to travel from the outside, Basttappen was not punished in Austin.
Instead, Norris participated in BC at P3 and won a 5 second penalty. The commissioner judged him who had left the truck and gained advantages.
Asked by reporters ahead of the Mexican Grand Prix if he thought F1’s racing rules needed to be adjusted in the wake of the Verstappen-Norris scandal, Hamilton stressed he believed this was not a new issue.
“I’ve been talking about this for a long time and it’s interesting that people are talking about it now because the same thing happened to me in 2021,” he said.
“If you think about Brazil for example, I was ahead when I braked and the other car braked and I couldn’t go into the corner and I had to go wide, but they both went wide. But it couldn’t be helped because they had to avoid a collision.
“So this is something that happens a lot and we definitely need to do something about this. “You can’t let go of the brakes, pick up speed and go off the track and still maintain your position.”
The incident in Brazil is one of the reasons why Adrian Newey, the former Red Bull F1 design guru who joined Aston Martin in F1 for 2025, recently said Verstappen’s defensive actions against Hamilton were “a bit wrong.”
When asked on the High Performance podcast if Verstappen, now a three-time world champion, had ever shown any signs of a breakdown, Newey replied: “When the tension, especially after Silverstone, on track, between Lewis and Max got so high, I think Max was really stressed about that Silverstone crash.
“And of course he was the clear championship leader going into Silverstone, then he retired and then he more or less retired in Hungary when Valtteri [Bottas] hit him, not intentionally at all, but he still got hit and probably didn’t score any points, so he went from being the easy championship leader to now feeling a bit more pressure.
“And Mercedes managed to squeeze even more speed out of their car towards the end of the season.
“So it’s always easier to be the hunter than the prey.
And I think Max started to feel a little bit of pressure from people being persecuted, so actually, it was probably lucky for him that he didn’t get a ticket in Brazil. The Saudis, where they had a little bit of a ding-dong, it was a bit more…
I think it was unclear, but Max was probably a bit out of sorts in Brazil actually, so I think he felt it a bit.” Verstappen takes a 57-point lead in the Drivers’ Championship over Norris at the Mexican Grand Prix, an event Verstappen has won a record five times.