A year after the bumper car with Russell, Verstappen returns to zero penalty points

Back to zero Max Verstappen no longer has penalty points on his licence. Not even one. With the advent of June 1st, the three he had collected exactly 12 months ago during the Spanish GP in Barcelona for voluntarily hitting George Russell’s Mercedes in the excited final stages of that race were also removed from his record. The clash between the two, who already had tense histories between them dating back to qualifying for the Qatar GP the previous season, created enormous tension in the paddock and pushed Verstappen one step away from disqualification for a GP as the Dutch Red Bull champion received 11 penalty points out of a possible 12. With another sanction, the four-time world champion would have been forced not to compete in a Grand Prix, just as happened during the 2024 season to Danish Kevin Magnussen, who was stopped for the Azerbaijan GP. Since then, Verstappen has been particularly careful to avoid getting into complicated situations, managing to no longer receive any penalties and ‘unmarked’ one race after another all the sanctions he had collected in the previous twelve months. A different evaluation criterion It must be said, however, that at the beginning of the 2026 season the criterion for assigning penalty points by the stewards has completely changed. Now the commissioners intervene to assign penalty points on the pilots’ super license only for actually serious and dangerous, almost deliberate, actions. In all other cases they limit themselves to assigning the canonical time penalties, without however intervening by assigning penalty points. Also for this reason, in the first five GPs held this year, no driver has received any penalty points.

Automobile Magazine – F1 English News , 2026-06-02 17:45:00