Max Verstappen has renewed his criticism of a journalist he threw out of a press conference at the beginning of the Japanese Grand Prix weekend.
The Red Bull driver told Giles Richards to leave his media session on Thursday. Verstappen claimed The Guardian’s Formula 1 correspondent “laughed at me” when he put a question to him at the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix last year.
Verstappen responded to the question at the time by claiming Richards had a “stupid grin” at the time. Richards responded to Verstappen’s allegation of mockery two days ago.
“I’m not sure I had a stupid grin,” he wrote. “I was certainly taken aback by the vehemence of his reply and it might have prompted a nervous smile. But I did not think it was funny, nor was I enjoying myself at his expense.”
The dispute arose after Richards asked Verstappen whether, in light of his narrow championship defeat in that day’s race, he regretted an earlier collision with George Russell at the Spanish Grand Prix. Verstappen claimed he had “answered it more than 20 times” already.
“So when someone asks that question during the press conference after the last race and also laughs in your face, to me that has to do with a complete lack of respect,” he told Viaplay. “If you don’t give me respect, why would I give you respect?”
The Red Bull driver accused Richards of acting with malice. “You only see the camera pointed at me and not at that person, who just started laughing,” he said. “And you could clearly see that there was malicious intent behind it at that moment.
“That is enough for me. I have been in Formula 1 long enough to know who has good intentions and who has bad intentions. If you go and laugh at me right there, you clearly don’t have good intentions.”
Verstappen has clashed with other members of the media over their coverage of him before. In 2022 he and Christian Horner, Red Bull’s team principal at the time, refused to give interviews to Sky during the United States Grand Prix weekend.
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Keith Collantine
Lifelong motor sport fan Keith set up RaceFans in 2005 – when it was originally called F1 Fanatic. Having previously worked as a motoring journalist, Keith began running the site full-time in 2010, achieving a long-held ambition to dedicate his full attention to his passion for motor racing. View all posts by Keith Collantine