Damon Hill has taken aim at Max Verstappen’s Miami radio fury, branding the Red Bull driver’s complaints about Alex Albon’s defence as rich coming from someone who’s built a career on giving — and taking — exactly that kind of racing.
Verstappen arrived in Miami with a rare whiff of momentum, Red Bull rolling out a revised RB22 featuring what the team has dubbed its new “Macarena” rear wing. For once in 2026, it looked like a weekend where he could properly lean on the front of the grid, lining up a season-best second on Sunday.
It unravelled almost immediately. Verstappen’s opening-lap lunge at Charles Leclerc for the lead ended in a 360-degree spin, the sort of costly, self-inflicted wound that leaves you with nothing to argue about other than your own impatience. He recovered without damage but dropped to ninth, and Red Bull pivoted quickly to an aggressive strategy: first to blink, first to stop.
On lap seven Verstappen pitted from the mediums to hard tyres, rejoining deep in the pack in 16th and doing what Verstappen does when the car has enough pace — carving forward with the kind of urgency that makes everyone ahead feel like a moving chicane. Up to that point it was a familiar rhythm: late braking, tight placement, rivals deciding whether it’s smarter to concede and live, or fight and risk becoming the next clip on the highlights reel.
Albon chose the second option.
The Williams driver, fighting to keep ninth, made Verstappen work for it — elbows out, car positioned, and no freebies. Verstappen didn’t enjoy it one bit.
“Mate, he just squeezed me onto the bollard!” he told Gianpiero Lambiase over the radio. “What the f***! That’s not allowed.”
It was a flash of indignation that landed with a thud for Hill, who has never been shy about offering an old-school view of what does and doesn’t wash in wheel-to-wheel combat. Speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, the 1996 world champion suggested Verstappen’s outrage would be easier to swallow if Verstappen himself wasn’t so often the author of the same kind of pressure.
“Hearing him complaining about Alex Albon regaining the place and squeezing Max Verstappen,” Hill said, “I have to say, Max can’t really complain about other people doing things like that to him. He does it enough to everyone else.”
Hill’s point wasn’t really about whether Albon crossed a line — that’s always a sliding scale, dependent on stewarding trends and whatever mood the paddock is in that weekend. It was about the optics: Verstappen, more than anyone of his era, has normalised the idea that if you’re on the inside you’re entitled to use every inch of road on the exit. Drivers have adapted around him. Some have learned to yield early. Some have stopped fighting because they know the argument is usually settled at the apex.
So when a rival finally makes Verstappen feel cramped, the response inevitably gets scrutinised.
Miami also had a neat bit of symmetry in the timing. Verstappen’s irritation at Albon came a day after another set-to with a familiar name: Lewis Hamilton, in Saturday’s Sprint. Hamilton was ahead on lap eight when Verstappen threw the car up the inside at Turn 11, both running out of road with Verstappen emerging in front. Verstappen was later told to give the place back, Hamilton finishing sixth and Verstappen seventh.
Hill actually liked the ambition of that attempt, even if it ended the way Verstappen’s moves often do: deep, decisive, and right on the edge of what the other guy can realistically accommodate.
“You’d have to say it was a good pass attempt by Max,” Hill said. “He actually got down inside… And famously, in his own inimitable style, goes very deep and uses all the road.”
That’s the Verstappen paradox in one weekend: the move that’s celebrated as bold when he’s the one delivering it becomes unacceptable when he’s the one being squeezed.
On Sunday, Verstappen eventually forced his way past Albon and limited the damage to fifth at the flag — a solid recovery drive in isolation, but one that still carried the sting of what might have been without that first-lap spin. The 14 points were enough to lift him into the top 10 of the Drivers’ Championship, sitting seventh after Miami.
The bigger story, though, is the one Hill is needling at: Verstappen’s relationship with racing etiquette has always been transactional. If you don’t yield, he’ll go to the limit. If you do yield, he’ll take the position and move on. Albon, to his credit, didn’t treat the Red Bull like a fast-track pass stamp, and for a few corners at least he made Verstappen live by the same code he so often imposes on everyone else.
