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The 2024 Formula 1 season wraps up this weekend and despite the Drivers’ Championship being wrapped up, there is still a lot of intensity within the paddock, and not just because there’s still prize money to be won in the Constructors’ Standings.

Mercedes’ George Russell and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen are having one hell of a beef right now… so it’s kind of a shame the season is ending when it is.

Despite appearing buddy-buddy ahead of the Qatar Grand Prix weekend, the two had a run-in on-track in qualifying that saw Verstappen taking a one-place grid penalty for impeding Russell which effectively swapped their starting positions on the front row of the grid.

Afterward, Verstappen was critical of Russell, who he said fought hard in the race stewards’ office to make sure he was penalized.

“I’ve never seen someone trying to screw someone over that hard,” Verstappen said after winning the race the following day.

Well, ahead of the finale in Abu Dhabi Russell has responded and he’s making some pretty serious accusations.

“I find it all quite ironic seeing as Saturday night he said he was going to purposefully go out of his way to crash into me and ‘put me on my f–king head in the wall,’” Russell told the media, per RACER’s Chris Medland. “So, to question somebody’s integrity as a person, while saying comments like that the day before, I find is very ironic, and I’m not going to sit here and accept it.”

Whoa. That’s serious.

Russel said that Verstappen said this to him privately as they left the stewards’ office in Qatar.

“He said, ‘I don’t know why you would want to screw me like this. I’m so disappointed in you. I was going to not even race you tomorrow, I was going to let you by, but now if I have to, I will purposely go out of my way to put you on your f****** head in the wall,’” Russell recounted. “So I don’t understand why he was so unnecessarily aggressive and violent in that regard.”

The beef between Mercedes’ George Russell and Red Bull’s Max Verstappen is heating up, despite the season drawing to a close.. (Photo by Jakub Porzycki/NurPhoto)

Max Has A History Of Dealing With Adversity With Aggression

The F1 paddock is a notoriously high-pressure environment and incredibly intense, so maybe Verstappen said that in the heat of the moment… however, we’ve seen Max get ferociously aggressive he feels backed into a corner, something Russell noted as well.

In a way, channeling adversity into aggression is a good quality in a racing driver, but it’s a tough line to toe before it becomes unsportsmanlike.

“People have been bullied by Max for years now, and you can’t question his driving abilities. But he cannot deal with adversity,” Russell said Whenever anything has gone against him — Jeddah ’21, Brazil ’21 — he lashes out.”

He also singled out this year’s Hungarian Grand Prix, a race in which Red Bull struggled, leading to Max crashing into Russell’s Mercedes teammate Lewis Hamilton and then ripping his own team over the radio.

However, George insisted that he was not trying to get Verstappen in trouble, he just wanted to stick up for himself.

“I’m not looking to get Max penalized,” he said, per Crash.net. “I’m not looking for any repercussion from this. I am standing up for myself.

“For a guy who’s coming out, questioning my integrity as a person, slamming me in the press, and I just want to set the record straight. As I said, everybody’s entitled to their own opinion.”

Cars will be on track tomorrow for practice which will give Verstappen a chance to respond, and I’m sure this beef is far from over.