Verstappen Gets a Reprimand and a Warning Point for His Portimao GT3 Collision

Max Verstappen used his weekend off from Formula 1 to go racing somewhere else, and the stewards there have already had to speak to him. In first practice for the GT World Challenge Europe finale at Portimao on Friday, Verstappen put his Mercedes-AMG GT3 inside Ezequiel Perez Companc’s Audi at Turn 3, spun it, and was found wholly to blame. The punishment, a reprimand and one Behavioural Warning Point, is small. The image is not: the four-time world champion, on his first flying lap, gesturing in frustration at a Silver Cup driver the stewards decided he had hit.

What happened at Turn 3?

Very little room, claimed anyway. Verstappen was on his first proper flying lap of the 90-minute session when he tried to pass the number 25 Sainteloc Racing Audi on the inside at Turn 3, RacingNews365 reports. The gap closed, the cars touched, and the Audi spun around to face the Mercedes. Onboard footage showed Verstappen raising a hand in frustration, PlanetF1 reports, the gesture of a driver who believed the other car had pulled across him. Verstappen did most of the running in the session and his crew, shared with Ben Barnicoat and Chris Lulham, was classified 20th. It is not his first stewards’ file of the autumn: in Singapore he kept a sprint pole through a yellow-flag inquiry, on a weekend that also produced the record nine-retirement sprint.

Did the hand gesture match the verdict?

No, and that gap is the story in miniature. The onboard pictures showed a driver convinced the Audi had closed the door on him, PlanetF1 reports. The stewards, having heard that same driver explain he expected the Audi to stay wide, still placed the blame wholly on his car. Perez Companc, the driver who was spun, was the most relaxed person in the process, calling it an unfortunate racing incident. In Formula 1, Verstappen’s frustration in a moment like this becomes a week of radio debate. In a GT3 paddock on a Friday morning, it became a short hearing, a split between what the gesture claimed and what the video showed, and a warning point.

What did the stewards decide?

That it was his fault, entirely, and then that it did not deserve much. The stewards reviewed the video and heard both drivers, PlanetF1 reports. Perez Companc said he had been concentrating on the cars ahead, could not see the Mercedes on his right, and considered it an unfortunate racing incident. Verstappen said he had expected the Audi to stay towards the outside and was surprised when it turned in. The verdict went against him anyway: his car caused an avoidable collision and was wholly to blame. The sanction stopped at a reprimand plus the warning point because of two mitigating factors, that it happened on the first lap of first practice and that the queue of cars ahead of the Audi had shaped its line. Blame in full, punishment in miniature.

Why does one warning point matter?

Because the ladder above it is automatic. Crash reports that three Behavioural Warning Points trigger a five-place grid penalty at the next GT World Challenge race Verstappen enters, four points mean a 10-place drop, and five bring a drive-through. He has one, banked before he has turned a racing lap in the series this weekend. For a driver whose GT programme is a hobby pursued at the highest level, that is a real constraint on how he can race the three-hour finale on Saturday and any round he enters next. The contrast with his day job is part of the story: in Formula 1 he arrives in Austin next week with a new race engineer phasing in on his radio and a championship arithmetic problem named Antonelli ahead of him. In Portimao, he is a guest in someone else’s championship, being policed like one.

What is he doing in Portugal at all?

The finale of a second career he is building in plain sight. This is Verstappen’s first GT outing since the Nurburgring 24 Hours in May, where his team led with four hours remaining before a driveshaft failure dropped the car down the order, PlanetF1 reports. The Portimao car runs under his own Verstappen Racing banner, with regulars Dani Juncadella and Jules Gounon away in Barcelona for the World Endurance Championship and Barnicoat and Lulham stepping in, Crash reports. The meeting also puts him on the same grid as Valentino Rossi for the first time. It sits, pointedly, in the one gap in his F1 calendar between Singapore, where he won, and Austin. Most drivers spent this week resting. Verstappen spent Friday morning collecting a reprimand, and he still has a three-hour race to run on Saturday, in a series where the cars cannot always pass each other is a debate he has had in his other job too.

How did the Portimao race itself go? (Update, October 17)

Update, October 17: the reprimand turned out to be the smaller of the weekend’s two penalties, and it was not his. A set-up problem left the number 3 Mercedes scraping its way to 15th in Friday evening qualifying, in a shower of sparks, The Race reports. Barnicoat pulled the car into the top 10 in the opening stint and Lulham had it charging towards the top five when, on a restart lap after a safety car, he assisted Luca Stolz’s Mercedes into a spin while trying to take fifth. The drive-through penalty for that contact was served at the end of Lulham’s stint, which meant Verstappen took over in 24th place with 45 minutes of after-dark racing remaining. A further long safety car cost him laps but bunched the field, and from 19th at the restart with 23 minutes left he climbed to ninth, in a battle with Arthur Leclerc’s AF Corse Ferrari that The Race calls particularly entertaining. He reached the pits grinning, to a large cheer from the main grandstand. The GetSpeed Mercedes of Ralf Aron, Fabian Schiller and Maxi Gotz won the race, RacingNews365 reports. The weekend’s shape is now complete: a reprimand for his own contact on Friday, a recovery drive for his team-mate’s contact on Saturday, and no further warning points added to the one he carries.

Why did Verstappen speak up for Lulham? (Update, October 18)

Update, October 18: because the reaction to Lulham’s stint stopped being about racing. Verstappen posted a statement on his own channels on Sunday calling out the personal abuse aimed at his team-mate after the race. He said the weekend had been exciting and the team had learnt a lot, then changed subject: he felt he needed to speak up about the hate and harassment Chris has received after the race, that everyone can have their opinions about what happened on track but personal attacks are not okay, and that Chris had a really strong stint and mistakes can happen, RacingNews365 reports. He closed the point plainly: there is no place for this kind of abuse in our sport or anywhere else.

The statement draws the line where the incident itself sits. Lulham’s contact with Luca Stolz’s number 48 Mercedes earned the drive-through, and the penalty is a legitimate subject of criticism; Athlon Sports notes Verstappen’s message defended the driver rather than the move, holding that a racing mistake does not justify harassment. The defence also carries the weight of who employs whom. Lulham was racing for Verstappen’s own team, in a car carrying Verstappen’s name, on a weekend when the four-time Formula 1 champion’s presence was the reason the finale drew its crowd. The abuse arrived because of that spotlight. The reply used the same spotlight, aimed the other way, and it closes the Portimao weekend on a different note from Friday’s reprimand: the guest driver the stewards had to discipline on Friday was, by Sunday, the team owner setting the paddock’s terms for how his drivers get talked about.