David Coulthard doesn’t sound particularly shocked that Max Verstappen decided he’d had enough of a question. What caught the former Red Bull driver off-guard was the silence that followed.
Ahead of the Japanese Grand Prix at Suzuka, Verstappen refused to start a scheduled pre-event media session while a reporter from *The Guardian* remained in the room. The session, held in Red Bull’s hospitality area, didn’t begin until the journalist had been told to leave.
For Coulthard, the awkwardness wasn’t really about a driver choosing not to engage. In the paddock, selective hearing is practically a skillset. It was the spectacle of physically ejecting someone from a working media environment — and the apparent lack of any official response.
“Even though he’s absolutely at right, you don’t have to answer the question, it is unusual to ask somebody to leave from that environment,” Coulthard said on the *Up To Speed* podcast. “I’m actually a little bit surprised the FIA didn’t take a stance on it. I didn’t see anything that there was any sort of reprimand. Because basically, if he [Max] was to say the word sh*t in there, he’d get fined.”
That comparison lands because it cuts to something F1 has been wrestling with for a while: what, exactly, the FIA wants to police — and what it’s prepared to let teams and drivers sort out themselves. Language in official press conferences has become a regulatory flashpoint. But the moment a driver uses access itself as leverage, the rulebook suddenly feels a lot thinner.
In Verstappen’s case, the tension wasn’t born in Suzuka. The incident was an extension of an exchange between the same journalist and Verstappen at the 2025 Abu Dhabi season finale, when he was asked whether he regretted his actions in Spain after colliding with George Russell — an incident that arguably cost him nine points. Verstappen went on to lose the 2025 title to Lando Norris by two points. That context matters: this wasn’t a random flare-up, it was a continuation of a grudge.
The detail that complicates any governing-body response is logistical. It’s understood there was no formal follow-up with Verstappen because the exchange didn’t take place in an FIA-run press conference. The session was mandatory, yes, but it was hosted by Red Bull — and that grey area is precisely the point.
F1 has created a world where access is both currency and obligation. Drivers must appear, teams must facilitate, and media must play by an ever-expanding list of behavioural expectations. Yet when something goes sideways in a team-controlled room, the sport suddenly treats it like an internal matter. It’s not hard to see why Coulthard thinks that’s inconsistent: if standards exist, the paddock needs to know where they apply and who enforces them.
Verstappen isn’t the first to pull the ejector seat lever, either. At the 2025 Australian Grand Prix, a reporter was told to leave a team-organised media call by then-Alpine boss Oliver Oakes after questions asked during pre-season testing. There’s precedent for the practice — which only strengthens the argument that the sport should decide whether it’s acceptable, rather than handling each case via shrugs and selective outrage.
None of this is likely to make Verstappen lose sleep. He’s never tried to be the paddock’s most agreeable citizen, and he’s been openly combative on issues ranging from FIA policing of language — a debate reignited after he swore in an official session at the 2024 Singapore Grand Prix — to the direction of F1’s 2026 technical regulations.
In Japan, Verstappen reiterated that he doesn’t feel “shut up” by anyone, but the broader picture he painted was of someone increasingly irritated by the ecosystem around the racing itself.
“People are not trying to shut me up,” he said. “I mean, at the end of the day, I say what I think of the situation, because I care about the sport, and I think that’s right, and that’s what I say, and I go home. But at the moment, it’s just not a really nice situation.”
Pressed on motivation as work continues to address concerns around the regulations as they stand, he didn’t pretend it was effortless.
“It’s a valid question,” Verstappen conceded. “Every day I wake up, I convince myself again. Many times.”
What makes the Suzuka incident more than just another Verstappen-versus-the-world vignette is what it invites others to do. If a four-time world champion can stop a session until a journalist is removed, that’s a powerful signal — not just about who holds the room, but about how fragile the sport’s media norms are once tempers flare.
For the FIA, Coulthard’s point is uncomfortable because it isn’t really about Verstappen at all. It’s about governance. Either driver-media interaction is part of the FIA’s remit when it’s mandatory, or it isn’t. If it is, the sport needs clearer guidance than a reliance on whether the chairs happen to be arranged under the FIA banner that day. If it isn’t, then F1 is effectively endorsing a patchwork system where teams control access and the rules change depending on whose hospitality unit you’re sitting in.
Verstappen will move on quickly — he always does. The question is whether the sport will, too, or whether this is the moment it finally decides what “mandatory” is supposed to mean.
