Johnny Herbert believes Max Verstappen’s father Jos is to blame for his son’s aggressive driving style, which saw him collide with Lando Norris at the Austrian Grand Prix. The McLaren driver’s race was ruined when Verstappen took him out while they were battling for the lead, allowing George Russell to claim a surprise victory.
Verstappen moved under braking when Norris came up alongside him in the closing stages of the race, leading to both drivers suffering punctures. The Dutchman pitted for a new set of tyres and finished fifth despite taking a 10-second penalty, while Norris was forced to retire.
Herbert, who was working as a steward, believes Verstappen’s father Jos is responsible for moulding him into an aggressive driver. He compared Verstappen’s style to that of Michael Schumacher, who was similarly uncompromising when it came to battling with his rivals.
“Look at Michael’s incidents with Damon Hill and Jacques Villeneuve, for instance,” Herbert told Coin Poker.
“He would do anything he could to benefit from a certain situation. Jos, his father, drove with Michael at Benetton and he would have seen first-hand those incidents how Michael operated.
“I can imagine him saying to Max in his younger days: ‘I want you to drive and intimidate everyone off the circuit effectively. You make sure that you win the race by being the toughest driver’.
“The way Max drives will have been shaped a lot by Jos’s input and his own experiences of driving with Michael Schumacher. It will never change. It is ingrained in him.”
Herbert went on to explain the stewards were powerless to give Verstappen anything more than a 10-second penalty despite it being immediately clear that he was the driver at fault.
“That is the hardest one that can be applied under FIA guidelines that we operate under as stewards,” he said.
“McLaren have said it should have been harsher, but that is the game all teams play. If someone had flipped over or been barrel rolling down the track I don’t know if that would have changed things.
“Forcing a driver off the circuit or causing an incident is what it came under. That was the maximum sanction we could have taken. When we were watching it, it immediately came down to whose fault was it, and it was Max’s.
“The interesting thing is we were just about to penalise Lando at the time because he had gone outside the track limit four times and we gave him a five-second penalty literally at the moment they came into contact.
“We were dealing with that when the contact happened and I looked up and saw the tyre off.”