It was almost as if Max Verstappen had been awoken from the trance of his season as he dealt with the reaction to what transpired over his radio on the last lap in Brazil. The cowardly moronic elements at the toxic fringes of social media had made death threats to him, his family and to the other participant in this drama, Sergio Perez. 

But even the less extreme angry reactions are from a place not understanding the distinction between a competitor and the person in which the competitor resides. There is a bubble in which a competitor seals themselves off from the everyday world, especially in something as solitary and extreme as racing an F1 car.

That’s the place where they perform and going in there becomes a routine. The outer world is cut off, silenced and the entire focus is on delivering performance. At Red Bull in particular, but all teams to an extent, the lead driver is made to feel supported by all around him, made to feel like this is his racing family and that everyone is there to be focused on him.

The team reality is that this is a big organisation with hundreds of people working to produce that car and to go racing with it. But that isn’t a feeling any driver wants to take with them into the car. These are intense competitors and the cars are simply the instruments through which they compete.

Occasionally the two worlds collide, as we saw at Alpine in Brazil’s sprint race the day before the Verstappen controversy. Fernando Alonso and Esteban Ocon’s two bouts of contact on the opening lap which ruined the races of both led to team boss Laurent Rossi to tell them that if they had been any other employees but drivers, prioritising themselves over the team would have resulted in instant dismissal for gross misconduct. But they are drivers, with a rare skill set upon which the team relies. They are employees only in the formal sense, not the visceral. They are hired gun mercenaries grudgingly obliged to be part of a team. That used to be at the very core of the appeal of racing, that rebellion against the mediocrity of the everyday.

But once it’s all over, they are out of the combat zone and have decompressed, they’re not that fierce. They are a pretty damn cool bunch of people on the whole. Recall the contrast between Red Bull era Sebastian Vettel, his refusal to comply to Multi 21 or to apologise for it, the victory ‘number 1’ finger etc, the contrast between that guy and the smiling, funny, caring Vettel underneath? Some of the other drivers referred to it yesterday when asked of their thoughts about his retirement.

[...]

Talk to those around Verstappen and they will tell you that for all his assassin character in the car, his dominant personal trait away from racing is as a peacekeeper, who always wants to make things right for those around him. There isn’t really a ‘side’ to him, no cynical, calculated strategy there, but his racing persona, very much formed and honed by father Jos Verstappen – a man whose ferocity in the car extends to the outside world much more than with Max – is zero compromise and binary. So when asked in Mexico if he’d be prepared to help Perez to a home victory in his chase of second in the championship his answer – probably based on events in Monaco qualifying, which played a crucial part in Perez defeating Verstappen to win the race – was a firm ‘no’ and in his usual straightforward, open way he explained why.

Hence when, a race later, he was asked to help the same cause with a lap to go, he was surprised to hear the question, as he’d already responded to the same request in Mexico, with reasons. His way of communicating that over the radio wasn’t gracious and he’d probably have made things a lot easier for himself if he’d just either stayed silent or said, ‘Let’s discuss it later’. But he gave his response from the perspective of his in-car self, and that of an indulged provider of performance by a team which specialises in cossetting its number one to maximise that performance.

When the intensity of the cockpit meets the outside world in the era where social media makes the uninformed not realise it’s uninformed and that because it’s seen something believes it understands it, this is the fall-out.

Motor Sport Magazine, Mark Hughes

Red Bull boss Horner insists Verstappen is ready to challenge Hamilton

Christian Horner, sitting in the kitchen of the north London house he shares with his Spice Girl wife Geri, is concerned for the welfare of Formula One giant Niki Lauda.

The Austrian is recovering from the lung transplant he required last year as a cruel legacy of the fire that has been killed in his Ferrari at the Nurburgring in 1976. It was then that Lauda breathed in toxic fumes which have been plagued him ever since.

After various setbacks, the triple world champion is recovering at home in Vienna but he will not be fit in time for the opening race of the season in Melbourne on Sunday.

     Christian Horner once passed the opportunity to sign his compatriot Lewis Hamilton

'Niki is a big force of nature,' Horner said. 'I hope he will be back soon. It is a tough thing he has had to go through, but he is a fighter. He is unbelievable. "

So far, so nice. The child sentiments are indeed genuinely meant and Horner talks hotly of the 70-year-old's fighting spirit and good sportsmanship.

However, this is F1 and the sharp-toothed people who contest the big prizes – the Piranha Club , as the team principals were once known – never miss an opportunity to clamp their jaws around an opponent, in this case Mercedes.

     Horner is concerned about the welfare of friend and Formula One giant Niki Lauda

For Lauda is a non-executive chairman of Lewis Hamilton's Silver Arrows team and eminence grise to team principal Toto Wolff

'Looking in from the outside, Niki's absence is felt,' said Horner, pondering the potentially damaging effect on Hamilton's pursuit of a sixth world title. 'You could see that with Toto at the end of last season, when Niki was already away.

' Niki would be missed even more if it was a close fight for the title. He is always very good with the drivers and on big decisions. He was there as a crutch for Toto to lean on.

'Niki has a wealth of experience and was never afraid of voice an opinion. He had the trust and support of the Mercedes board as well. So the team will be without Niki having a direct involvement for now. "

Horner is in the unlikely situation of being practically the most senior of the team principals at the age of 45.

Only Sir Frank Williams remains in the titular charge of his eponymous team with whom the Englishman is the 31-year-old Red Bull boss. Jean Todt, Ron Dennis, Flavio Briatore and Eddie Jordan have all moved on.

     The 45-year-old claims Max Verstappen is ready to challenge Hamilton this season

During his tenure, Horner passed the opportunity to sign his compatriot Hamilton when he was desperate to join in 2012, keeping faith with Sebastian Vettel, the German who won the team's four drivers' titles between 2010 and 2013 before moving to his current home at Ferrari.

Now Horner has his latest star No 1 – Max Verstappen – to manage. Would he trade in the gung-ho Dutchman to enlist the last few years of Hamilton's brilliance

'No,' said Horner. 'Max is the future. He is 21 years of age and he is evolving. Both he and Lewis are phenomenal drivers. Lewis is one of the best of all time. Max has won grands prix but is yet to compete for a championship.

'However in terms of all-round ability, race craft and speed, Max is capable of going shoulder to shoulder with Lewis.'

Verstappen is headstrong as well as extremely talented. His uncompromising style caused him to crash and spill points in the first half of last season – and he was involved in some post-race shoving with backmarker Esteban Ocon after being collided in Brazil.

Horner said: 'Max was top scorer behind Hamilton in the second half of last season, so that shows how well he was driving. Max was criticized in some quarters when he showed emotion after the race with Ocon. At least there was passion. People relate to that child or emotion.

'That is why he has such a big following. We do not want vanilla characters. Lewis is a Marmite child or guy. That is good.

'It goes to the heart of what Formula One must look to be post-2020, when the new regulations come in. The drivers must be the stars of the show. They must be exhausted out of the cars. Technology plays too big a role at this moment in time. '

                   Those discussions about the shape of the sport – covering governance, technical and sporting regulations, and the commercial framework – for 2021 and beyond are Liberty Media and their F1 chief Chase Carey.

Horner feels some sympathy for the American. He said: 'Chase has a task similar to Theresa May's with Brexit – no deal will suit everyone, and the clock is ticking.

' At some point they want to make a decision. Bernie Ecclestone was a dictator and that, in some respects, is what this sport needs. You can not expect the teams to agree anything among themselves. They are self-interested. The plan for 2021 and beyond must be sorted out by the end of June. "

Is there a role for former supremo Ecclestone, I wonder, in the deliberations that are central to the sport's continued appeal?

Horner, who was best man at Ecclestone's wedding to his third wife Fabiana in 2012, said: 'You can never say never with Bernie.

' It would be unlikely with any other 88-year-old that they could become heavily involved again, but we are speaking about Bernie. You never know with him. Maybe one day he'll buy the sport back. He is still in good shape. He stays close to the teams, promoters, governments.

'Liberty had addressed the areas where he was weak – future technologies and digital media. But in terms of negotiating a deal, there is no better person than Bernard Charles. "

     The team principal says he feels sympathy for American F1 chief Chase Carey

While Carey and his assistants Sean Bratches and Ross Brawn ponder the future, eyes turn to Melbourne's Albert Park and Sunday's

Pre-season testing indicated that Ferrari, under new team principal Mattia Binotto, lead the way with Mercedes second strongest and Red Bull, newly powered by Honda, third. What does Horner predict for 2019

'There is a genuine feeling of optimism for a more competitive season than in recent years,' he said. 'Melbourne throws up strange results and it will take three races to get a clearer picture of how everyone stands.

' A three-way fight between Lewis, Sebastian and Max would be perfect, with the youngsters coming on strong from behind.

'It can not be better until the first weekend of December and the last 21 races in Abu Dhabi. That would be great. But Ferrari will come out of the blocks and I hope we're not far behind. "

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On Bernie… So Bernie has been nudged (as gently as possible) into a role with a long title. Chairman emeritus is, nonetheless, fitting. The word emeritus comes from Latin verb “to earn” and is usually conferred upon retired professors and clergymen, although it is also used in business as a mark of distinguished service. The word “merit” comes from the same root. Love him or loath him, Mr E, merits the title – not that such a thing will appeal to him at all. Given his character, one could not really expect a more graceful changeover of power, but it was clearly something that Liberty Media felt was essential in order to start the process of change in Formula 1. The fact that they recognised this need is a good thing. It has been very clear from the start that Liberty wanted a different style of management for the sport, which is so used to being in conflict with itself that some find it hard to imagine it can operate with everyone working together. NASCAR shows this is possible. Not everyone may agree with the France family or with how they do business, but they all understand it is best to work together and keep their disagreements out of the spotlight. People think that Bernie Ecclestone was a greedy man, but I don’t think this is the truth at all. Money was not the important thing. It was merely a way by which Bernie kept score. Money is only important when you don’t have it and I doubt he can a remember a day when he wasn’t rich. He has been a wealthy man for probably 65 of his 86 years. What was important for Bernie was the power to do the deal and the buzz he got from winning and getting people to agree to do things that they did not want to do. Once he had control of the sport he knew that he had something that people wanted and so it could be monetised and the score could be kept. Many people think that he did not love the sport, but I don’t think this is right either. I think he loved the gladiators, the men who drove the cars. There was always affection and admiration for what they did. He had tried it himself, remember, with a Connaught in 1958 and he knew that racing drivers were different and special people. In his early years he lost two drivers with whom he was close: Stuart Lewis-Evans in 1958 and Jochen Rindt in 1970. Later he would also lose one of his Brabham drivers, José Carlos Pace, in a plane crash, and another, Elio de Angelis, in a testing accident. I don’t think Bernie ever lost his passion for the drivers, or for some of those with whom he had dealings. He liked the mavericks: Enzo Ferrari, Max Mosley, Colin Chapman, Teddy Mayer, Ken Tyrrell, Frank Williams, Ron Dennis and Eddie Jordan. They were men who made things happen. He liked some of the race promoters as well, particularly Melbourne’s Ron Walker. He was never a big fan of men in blazers, although one sensed that he had a grudging respect for the late Jean Marie Balestre, the FIA President who fought him to a draw in the FISA-FOCA war of 1980-1982. What he did for Formula 1 over the years was mightily impressive, but how he won control of it and some of his dealings thereafter were less impressive. There was a famous occasion when Bernie informed his fellow FOCA members that he had juggled companies and contracts and had taken over control of all the important deals and that they were henceforth working for him. Ken Tyrrell had to be stopped from strangling him. They fought him a little, but he had the power. He was the paymaster. Over time, the teams clawed back more and more of the money and chipped away at his power, but it was only in recent years that he felt his hands were tied – and he did not like it. If he made one error, it was in agreeing to sell an option for 25 percent of the shares in the business to Thomas Haffa, a German TV mogul, who had already secured 50 percent of the business. Haffa soon ran into trouble and his empire was gobbled up by KirchBeteiligung, the holding company of a bigger German TV company. In March 2001, Leo Kirch, the boss of KirchBeteiligung, agreed to take over Haffa’s option and borrowed money from the Bavarian state bank – BayernLB – to pay for it. KirchBeteiligung became the controlling shareholder in Formula One. The problem was that Kirch had also borrowed too much money and it began to fail in 2002. BayernLB claimed the Formula One shares, as they had a right to do. That summer Ecclestone and his family’s Bambino Trust snatched control of the primary Formula One operating companies by appointing more directors than they were allowed to. This meant that they had management control of the business. BayernLB and other banks initiated legal action to win back control and after much delaying the first case came to court in December 2004. It was an embarrassing defeat with Mr Justice Park giving a summary judgment in favour of the banks, making it clear that Bambino had no case at all. He rejected one of Bambino’s arguments as “bordering on the hopeless”. He even refused the right to appeal. By 2005 Bernie agreed to settle the other fight with the banks. They could have removed him from that point onwards, but BayernLB representative Dr Gerhard Gribkowsky argued that Bernie was the key to F1’s success. This led to the famous sale of the banks shares to CVC Capital Partners, which gave Bernie control of the business once again. CVC did not care what he did, as long as it was able to extract the maximum in profit from the business. That suited Mr E fine. The media never really bothered him and he would happily give the newspapers the headlines they wanted, even if a lot of the stories never came true. He was just playing, keeping F1 in the papers. He had an impressive ability to neuter those who opposed him by sucking them in and making them dependent on him. He could wrap naive journalists around his little finger by tickling their ego, making them feel he was their best buddy. He was a genius at spotting people’s weaknesses and using them to his advantage. He understood greed and ambition and recognised people who might be dangerous to him. It was the old car dealer in action. He was funny, charming and yet utterly ruthless. I remember once, years ago, when I found myself in conflict with him, having worked for his Formula 1 magazine. He had done something which could have been challenged in court. Naive as I was, I said “You can’t do that.” Bernie looked at me with infinite coldness and replied: “I can do whatever I like”. He was right, of course, power overrules rights and wrongs. What was I going to do about it? I couldn’t afford to battle with him as the banks had done – and he knew it. To be fair, he made sure that I was paid all that was owed to me. Those who do not like him perhaps do not understand that there is a good side to him as well, as there is with almost all human beings. He didn’t want people to see too much of that, and one felt that he saw being kind and caring as some sort of weakness. When it came to the business, he didn’t see the value of anything that didn’t pay up front, as they say in England “a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush”. If you wanted something you had to pay for it and you had to pay big. There was rarely investment and when there was it often didn’t work. Early attempts at digital TV and his escapade into publishing both lost a lot of money, although these were nothing compared to the $100 million he had to pay to stop the celebrated trial in Germany. Bernie’s attention to detail was extraordinary, even back in the days of Brabham when he and McLaren’s Ron Dennis raised the bar every year in terms of professionalism and dragged the sport from its muddy paddocks to the glistening autodromes of the modern era. He took the sport global, but was never comfortable with Americans, who felt that race promoters should be allowed to make money as well. It was a blind spot that made no sense at all. F1 was a consumer business which was barely present in the world’s biggest consumer market. It was all driven by money which is why F1 lost some of its key traditional races, exchanging them for hopeless adventures into the Turkish countryside, Korean marshes and Indian building sites. CVC’s fixation on profits hurt the sport and, in the end, one sensed that Bernie realised this, but he did’t want to change anything. He wanted to go on doing deals as he had always done deals. He probably stayed on longer than was wise. But it was his train set. And then one day, it wasn’t.