Juan Pablo Montoya wants Formula 1 to stop treating driver criticism like harmless background noise — and he’s picked Max Verstappen as the example that needs stamping out.
Verstappen’s running commentary on 2026’s power-unit philosophy has become one of the season’s recurring themes. The Red Bull driver has been blunt about how the new energy-management demands shape the racing, taking issue with the idea that drivers are effectively forced into lifting and coasting not as a tactical choice, but as a baseline requirement to unlock performance later in the lap.
F1 did attempt to take some heat out of the situation ahead of the Miami Grand Prix, tweaking the energy management parameters by reducing the maximum permitted recharge in qualifying from 8MJ to 7MJ and trimming the boost to 250kW. But Miami is a high-energy circuit, and Verstappen argued the adjustment barely moved the needle.
“I mean, you still need to go a bit slower in places to go faster,” Verstappen said after the race. “So, yeah, it’s still not how I would like to see it.
“It’s still punishing you. You know, the faster you go through corners, you go slower on the next straight. So that’s not what it should be about.”
That’s a milder version of the language he’s used previously — he’s already leaned on “anti-racing” and “Mario Kart” barbs this season — but Montoya’s patience has worn thin. Speaking on the BBC’s Chequered Flag podcast, the seven-time grand prix winner didn’t just suggest Verstappen should wind his neck in; he argued the sport should hit him where it hurts.
“You’ve got to respect the sport,” Montoya said. “I’m okay you not liking the regulations, but the way you were speaking about what you’re living off and your own sport, there should be consequences for that.”
When asked what consequences, Montoya didn’t bother dressing it up.
“Park him,” he said — and confirmed he meant a ban. Montoya even floated adding “seven points… eight points” to Verstappen’s licence, framing it as a deterrent designed to bring the messaging back into line.
Montoya’s central gripe isn’t that Verstappen should be muzzled entirely. He was explicit that drivers have every right to dislike regulations and say so. It’s the way Verstappen has packaged the criticism — turning it into a soundbite that questions the legitimacy of the product — that Montoya believes crosses a line, especially from a driver whose profile guarantees it will dominate the conversation.
And he pushed back on the implied purity of Verstappen’s argument by pointing at F1’s recent past. Montoya referenced DRS as an earlier, highly artificial performance tool — “when the rear wing was open and you were getting 20 kph, was that not fake?” — essentially arguing that Verstappen can’t pretend 2026 is the first time the sport has leaned on engineered effects to shape racing dynamics.
But Montoya’s more interesting point wasn’t really about manners or nostalgia. It was about politics — and the way driver complaints can become useful weapons, whether they start out sincere or not.
He suggested there’s often a second layer to what fans hear: what a driver genuinely feels, and what a team wants amplified because it might tilt the regulatory conversation in its favour. In a season where the pecking order is still settling under a new ruleset, those narratives matter. Montoya’s warning was simple: today’s “racing is broken” quote can become tomorrow’s lobbying tool.
It’s not a hypothetical he’s plucked from thin air, either. Montoya pointed to 2003, when he believed Williams’ championship challenge was compromised after a tyre design change, triggered by complaints and images circulated in the paddock. In his view, that episode was a reminder of how quickly technical and political pressure can reshape the competitive landscape — and how a title fight can swing because the right people made the right noise at the right time.
That context adds bite to Montoya’s reaction to Verstappen. In his eyes, this isn’t just a driver venting after a frustrating weekend; it’s a high-profile figure repeatedly questioning the direction of the sport at a time when teams are still arguing over how the new era should be tuned.
The uncomfortable truth for F1 is that Verstappen is voicing something plenty of people in the paddock discuss more quietly: that the sport is still searching for the sweet spot between electrical ambition and racing instinct. Miami’s changes didn’t erase the complaints, and Verstappen’s line — that you’re “punished” for carrying speed — gets to the heart of the aesthetic problem. The fans don’t tune in to watch drivers manage invisible targets; they tune in to watch them attack.
But Montoya’s call for penalty points for criticism is an entirely different proposition, and one that would open its own can of worms. F1 already polices behaviour through the rulebook; extending that to opinion would be a short, slippery step from “protecting the sport” to curating it.
What’s clear is that 2026’s technical debate is no longer confined to engineers and FIA working groups. It’s now being fought in microphones, too — and the louder Verstappen gets, the more figures like Montoya will push back, not just on what he’s saying, but on what they fear it could be used for.
