Verstappen and Russell provided the late-season drama in F1 2024 after a qualifying incident at the Qatar Grand Prix resulted in Verstappen being penalised one place on the grid, costing him pole position and elevating Russell to P1.
The Red Bull driver left the stewards’ room fuming, claiming Russell did his best to “screw” him over and said he’d “lost all respect” for the Mercedes driver.
The spat continued into Abu Dhabi where Verstappen labelled Russell a “loser” who was “lying”, while Russell called the Dutchman a “bully” who threatened to “put me on my f****** head in the wall”.
The argument set the backdrop for the season-ending Abu Dhabi GP where the two lined up fourth and sixth on the grid, but nothing came of it as a spin from Verstappen at Turn 1 meant they never fought for position.
Jordan dubbed it a “sad encounter” as while he believes Russell was threatened by Verstappen, the Briton should never have spoken in the stewards’ room and instead should’ve left it to Mercedes to fight his case.
“It’s a sad encounter,” the former F1 team boss told the Formula for Success podcast. “It shouldn’t be happening. We shouldn’t even be talking about it, we should be talking about the race, we should be talking about Carlos Sainz, the season coming up and the new kids on the block.
“But anyway, we have to talk about the Max, George Russell affair, because they live beside each other in Monaco, as indeed you [David Coulthard] do and I do. So we see them on fairly reasonable timings throughout the year.
“And here’s my take. When I go to a stewards’ room and when I’m lying like hell to the steward in the hope that they might believe me or I have reasonably firm fine evidence, because very seldom did I ever have firm evidence, but I’d be bluffing my way through everything that I could think of.
“I would expect a driver to shut the f**k up. It’s not his business. He’s the driver. It’s like as if it didn’t matter, but he needs to be there because he’s a witness.
“Now, why George needed to change that? Because that’s the team principal’s role or the team manager’s role, and I’m sure Red Bull had it well in control. Obviously, George felt the need to speak.
“I’m not taking sides here, because I’m sure Max did say that. But incidentally, you know, I’m thinking back to my old days, Formula Ford, Formula Three, I mean how many people did you tell ‘if you f**king come near me I’m going to turn you over’. I mean, how many people have you said that to David? Well, I’ve said it to hundreds.
“So it’s a kind of a common language amongst racing drivers. So you have to exert your position, because you have to make sure that they know that you mean business if they’re going to start d***ing about.”
The 76-year-old also weighed in on the drivers’ dinner where Verstappen and Russell’s fellow drivers played a joke on the Briton by leaving him an open chair next to Verstappen.
But instead of sitting down as Jordan reckons he should’ve done, Russell picked up the chair and moved down the table to sit next to his team-mate Lewis Hamilton.
“I thought it was a lovely story,” Jordan continued. “Mercedes were late, so the drivers decided that they’d have their dinner, which they normally do, and they’d play a little game on George because they knew he’d be late. So they all took their seats with one empty seat beside Max.
“When George came in, he realised that he’d been gazumped, and George not feeling the moment for jocularly activities, decided, ‘Oh, this is embarrassing, what the f*** do I do now?’
“And what does he do when there was a great opportunity to sit down and say, ‘Listen, Max, let’s get over this, it is too much’. No, he picks the chair up and he walks with the chair all the way around the table.
“Remember that there were 20 something drivers there, and he goes and barges his way and muscles in beside Lewis.
Now, I think that was an opportunity missed and I would say, reach out to George, ‘George Max, we don’t need this. Go and shake hands, have a pint together, laugh about it, and let’s move on’. That’s what I would say.”
