Verstappen says Ferrari's free-racing policy gifted him Mexico City victory

Max Verstappen has questioned Ferrari’s decision to allow Lewis Hamilton and Charles Leclerc to race without team orders, arguing that their opening-lap collision at the Mexico City Grand Prix directly gifted him victory at Autodromo Hermanos Rodriguez.

The Red Bull driver won the race while Hamilton finished second and Leclerc fourth after a time penalty, following a fierce battle between the Ferrari teammates on the first lap. Speaking during the São Paulo Grand Prix weekend, Verstappen was blunt about how he saw the situation.

“I’ve said it before, and a lot of people often don’t agree, but if I was a team principal, I’d never get two number one drivers because then you get things like this,” Verstappen told Viaplay. “One won’t yield for the other because they both think they can win, and that’s how I am too. And if I was a team principal, I’d change this.”

Verstappen argued that a defined hierarchy would have produced a far better result for Ferrari. “If you had a clear number one and number two, they would’ve gone through the first corner as P1 and P2 and finished like that. Or P1 and P3, that’s fine too, because as a team you’re still scoring great points.”

Ferrari has consistently maintained that both drivers are free to race one another, and the policy remained unchanged even after the Mexico incident. Team principal Fred Vasseur held a meeting with Hamilton and Leclerc ahead of the Brazilian Grand Prix, later telling media that the pair had “squashed it”.

“It was good to discuss, good to clarify my position and their position,” Vasseur said at Interlagos. “The guidelines is still the same. They need to respect each other — they are two competitors with the fighting spirit for sure — but they need to have respect for the other one, and mainly they need to respect the brand, the team, the people working.”

Vasseur acknowledged that frustration had been building between the two drivers, noting they had started multiple weekends side by side on the grid, creating what he described as “a kind of accumulation of fact”.

The tension at Interlagos ultimately cost Ferrari dearly. Leclerc and Hamilton finished eighth and ninth respectively, leaving the team with just six points from the weekend. Despite the setback, Ferrari remain second in the Constructors’ Championship, 95 points clear of Red Bull with three races remaining.