Max Verstappen was handed a dramatic penalty in the dying moments of the Spanish Grand Prix. It came after he appeared to ram into George Russell in the final few laps in anger amid a bad-tempered duel with the driver.
Verstappen was already in a bad mood after having his strategy ruined by a late safety car. Kimi Antonelli stopped in the gravel after a power unit failure, giving everyone the chance to pit for new tyres.
But while most of the leaders stopped for soft tyres, Verstappen only had a set of the harder, slower compound available. So he could kiss goodbye any chance he had of challenging the McLaren cars ahead and instead had to defend from behind.
Charles Leclerc immediately moved past while George Russell also nearly managed it, but had to pull out when he tapped the wheel of the . That infuriated Verstappen whose mood was not helped by his race engineer advising him to give the place to the Mercedes.
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He did, but not before he seemed to intentionally bang wheels with Russell. "What the f***?" the Brit said over the radio, clearly stunned by Verstappen's actions – and the stewards were not at all pleased with what he had done either.
It wasn't long before it was announced that the four-time F1 champion had been handed a 10-second time penalty. That dropped him all the way down to 10th place in the final classification, scoring just one single point while his McLaren title rivals finished first and second.
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Oscar Piastri won from pole, slightly extending his championship lead over team-mate Lando Norris who was second. Leclerc managed to make his way up from seventh on the grid to the podium, while Russell inherited fourth place from Verstappen.
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